Midpost Regret

There’s a condition afflicting bloggers the world over known as Meditabellae desiderium or ‘Midpost Regret.’

Midpost regret occurs when a writer has started writing or nearly finished writing a post and realizes that their post was:

a) poorly thought out.
b) poorly executed.
c) inappropriate or uninteresting.
d) required a different emotion/state of consciousness/timeline
e) “I feel like having pumpkin pie”
f) all of the above.

It happens to the best of us. How often have we all started saying or writing something before we realized that the idea only seemed brilliant when it was formed in a half-conscious stupor?

Frequent commenter Alethea B tells a story of writing a post and looking up a picture of the Weinerschnitzel mascot (if you don’t know who he is, he’s a fleeing hot dog called “The Delicious One”). Alethea was placing the image in her blog when Midpost Regret descended upon her. “What the hell??” she said out loud and deleted the post, glad that nobody would ever know she had thought that was a good idea.

When Midpost Regret occurs, there are only three possible reactions:

1. Ignore it and finish the post.
2. Have what is known as a Midpost Crisis and delete the post.
3. Save the post as a draft in the hope that you might successfully finish it in the future.

Currently, I have 10 drafts which will eventually (I hope) turn into wonderful posts. They are: “I hate Texas,” “All political systems tend toward two parties,” “Debates between theists and atheists always favor atheists,” “Road Tripped,” Untitled Post #758, “External Obligations to the Internal World,” “A Pixelated Survey,” “I’m so funny!!,” “Dear Pixel, age 10″ and “:sad:”

If you ask really nicely, I might dust one of those off and finish it.

Scientists are still looking for a cure for Midpost Regret. But in the meantime, please think before you post.

(In the spirit of irony, I spent half the post looking for a picture of “The Delicious One” and the other half wondering whether this was a good idea or not.)

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2005: Spain legalizes same-sex marriage

People are weird.

This is my favorite story about the ‘scene‘

It doesn’t matter what scene it is or who is in it or what it’s about. It could be mac users ragging on PC users or star wars geeks ragging on star trek nerds or punk rokkers ragging on emo kidz. The bottom line is that everyone wants to be part of the in-group. It’s a mentality that– in general– helps cultures survive… it’s also pathetically stupid.

I’ll give you this story, which I’ve told people before, though I cannot remember who or where:

Three of my cousins (aged 12, 13, 15) live next door to me. One week, three other cousins (10, 12, 14) came to visit with their family. I am far older (20 when this happened). Nevertheless, I was the ‘cool’ older kid and they asked me to hang out with them.

Not being a jerk, I capitulated. I went into their room and watched them play Dragon Ball Z on the Playstation. They asked if I wanted to play and I said, “sure, why not?”

The problem with Dragon Ball Z on the Playstation is that it’s the kind of game that requires skill. I, having not played video games since high school, had no such skill. Thus, I’d get beaten senseless in every match.

At about the fifteenth-straight loss to my 12-year-old cousin, I started losing respect in their eyes. However, instead of giving up and laughing it off, I redoubled my effort to prove I had more ’skillz’ than they did.

I failed miserably. But I did learn a valuable lesson that day: somehow, because everyone around me had warped values as to what was important, I started to think that it was important too. It suddenly made the Stanford Prison Experiment and the Milgram Experiment make much more sense.

It also taught me to question everything I care about and ask why I care about it so. More than that, it taught me to avoid those situations and that I, too, was vulnerable. Heck, if anyone told me right now to shock anyone to death, I’d do it… it doesn’t even have to be an authority figure, just a guy in a white lab coat.

… and it doesn’t even have to be really white. It could be gray… and not a coat… lead me?

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Seven Things about Pixel Q. Styx

(If memetics is going to claim to be the analogue of genetics, it’s got to be ready for a few harmful mutations every now and then. Luckily, in memetics, unlike genetics, you can purposefully mutate a meme. So seven instead of eight it is.)

• Players have to post these rules before we give you the facts.

• Players start with ei@#%^t random facts/habits about themselves.

• People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their ei#$%@t things and post these rules. At the end of your blog post, you need to choose ei%@#t people to get tagged and list their names.

• Don't forget to leave them a comment telling them they're tagged, and to read your blog.

I usually don’t conform to internet memes. I rather prefer to start them. In fact, other than a few tongue-in-cheek comments, I only remember participating in two memes: my 100 favorite songs and my 100th post, though I have elaborated on some ideas I thought were worthwhile.

That said, rules stated, on to the show!

1. My favorite music is silence. People hate driving in the car with me for that. I consider music to be appropriate only when there’s no one around who’s interesting enough to talk to, so turning on the radio is actually a big insult coming from me.
2. When I had to drive my friend’s girlfriend to school every day (fall 2004), I purposely turned on the radio. This led to many problems between us as she had the worst taste in music (Spanish pop) and I only wanted to listen to NPR, comedy CDs or static (just to mess with her, I think ).
3. To date I have only bought a handful of CDs. And CDs are pretty big, so a handful is only like 5 or 6. Four of those were while I was in Australia.
4. I’m unemployed and not looking. I’m not sure if it’s because I have bigger plans for my life or because of the exact opposite.
5. I talk more when I’m alone than when I’m with other people. But you would know that if you were with me some time when I was by myself.
6. I’ve taken the practice exam for the GRE three times now and the last score I got was a 770 in Quantitative (95th percentile) and a 560 in Verbal (60th percentile). This makes me sad because I haven’t had a serious maths class since 2002 and the entirety of my formal education should have trained me in my Verbal skills (philosophy and journalism).
7. I’m terrible at asking for recommendations and selling myself on paper, which scares me when I think about how I will get into a good graduate program and- worse- pay for it.
8. The meme for this number was corrupted due to a mutation. Please try again later.

I’m not a particular fan of tagging, but Seth might be interested in this and I miss hearing from Moof… oh, and what the hell, I’ll pull Yoshi into the fray. Maybe he’ll start posting more than just his portfolio.

Last Year: Please do not kill me oh nerdlingers
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Dear Australia,

Why do you hate visitors?

Do you think we smell bad? Are we jerks? Do we take all of your jobs? Or do you just think we’re going to bring rabbits into you and watch them wreck havok?

I know you worked hard to provide information for people who want to visit, but all of the information I find is simply disheartening or confusing. Examples:

• Do I need a family member living in Australia to sponsor me, or can it be just anyone I know?
• How do I prove I’m of good character? If my life’s plot hasn’t advanced much and the setting is miserable, it’s assumed I have good character, isn’t it? Otherwise it would just be a miserable existence and those haven’t been popular since Dickens!
• If I’m looking for a job, how exactly can I afford the $1305 charge for a Visa?
• Why do you hate us so?

I doubt John Howard himself would be able to get a visa.

Continue reading Dear Australia,…

Last Year: Could it be??, Foods not covered in the five-second rule
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