Okay, gotta talk about something that got on my last nerve today. Ya ever been in a lecture or some similar situation where someone dumbass left their cell phone on and it starts ringing? The first few times it happens it’s funny. A few years back, when I was first in a class and someone’s phone started ringing, I’m sure I laughed. After a while, however, it becomes the most excruciatingly annoying thing ever.

So why has this got me so aggravated now in particular? Because it seems to be happening MORE THAN EVER! I swear, every class I’m in (except physics, I admit), some moron’s phone rings. I had 3 lectures today. IN EVERY ONE OF MY LECTURES SOME IDIOT’S PHONE RUNG. What the hell is wrong with people?

First of all, there is rarely a good reason to have your phone on when you’re sitting in a lecture. If it rings, few would actually leave lecture to go talk on the phone. What usually happens is that the person acts with embarrassment and turns it off quickly. So why did they have it on in the first place? All I can figure is that they’re too stupid to realize that they should turn their phone off.

Furthermore, let’s say you are that one person who might be expecting an important phone call. Well guess what, there’s this option on every cell phone I’ve ever seen called “vibrate”. That way you’ll know your phone is ringing, but everyone else won’t! So you can quietly slip out of the room and answer the phone if need be. What a concept!

I guess people are just stupid. There is no reason that someone’s phone should be ringing in a lecture class. It bothers me mainly because it is distracting. But it bothers me for another reason: I think it’s extraordinarily disrespectful to the professor lecturing. I wish I was a professor who that happened to. I would spend a good 10 minutes making fun of the person whose phone rang:

“Ahh a phone call! Who is it? Please share! It must be pretty important that they’re calling you during a class. Maybe it’s your stock broker – looks like your dot com stock just tanked. Or maybe it’s your dealer: you need a few dime bags to kick back with tonight? Heck, whatever it is I’m sure it’s more interesting than my lecture. Why don’t you answer it and leave the room and not come back. The fact that your phone is on in my lecture says to me that there are things you would rather be doing, so go do them.”

I can’t believe professors take it. I would be livid. Oh wait, I already am livid, and I’m just a student! I suppose there is no courtesy left in the world, or perhaps no intelligence. Alas, I think it’s a combination of them both. What a world to live in, full of stupid, rude people. The moral of the story is: Don’t be that guy. Turn your damn phone off or put it on vibrate. Thanks.

Today, I’d like to share the lyrics to a song that has been one of my favorites since middle school. It’s actually a marginally popular song. It’s called “Sex Type Thing” by Stone Temple Pilots. I’m fairly confident that the lyrics are by Scott Weiland, but I’m not positive, as I do not have the CD case here. I will list the lyrics and then talk briefly about them. But they basically speak for themselves.

I am, I am, I am
I said I wanna get next to you
I said I gonna get close to you
You wouldn’t want me have to hurt you too, hurt you too?

I ain’t, I ain’t, I ain’t
A buyin’ into your apathy
I’m gonna learn ya my philosophy
You wanna know about atrocity, atrocity?

I know you want what’s on my mind
I know you like what’s on my mind
I know it eats you up inside
I know, you know, you know, you know

I am a man, a man
I’ll give ya somethin’ that ya won’t forget
I said ya shouldn’t have worn that dress
I said ya shouldn’t have worn that dress

I know you want what’s on my mind
I know you like what’s on my mind
I know it eats you up inside
I know, you know, you know, you know

Here I come, I come, I come

I am, I am, I am
I said I wanna get next to you
I said I gonna get close to you
You wouldn’t want me have to hurt you too, hurt you too?

I know you want what’s on my mind
I know you like what’s on my mind
I know it eats you up inside
I know, you know, you know, you know
I know you want what’s on my mind
I know you like what’s on my mind
I know it eats you up inside
I know, you know, you know, you know

Here I come, I come, I come
(Repeated a number of times)

Some people believe that this song is about date rape, but I think that is ridiculous. I think here Weiland wishes to highlight a major difference between men and women when it comes to relationships. In particular, his lyrics imply that there is a girl who is clearly playing games with the protagonist. As a result, the protagonist grows angry, because he does not like games. I have appreciated, and been empathetic with, this theme (as I mentioned) since middle school. The games that girls play have always pissed me off, and I think Weiland expresses the frustration that I, and surely others, have felt when it comes to this.

There are some references to violence, but I think that here he simply wants to draw a contrast between the differences between men and women. He does not actually describe any violence being inflicted upon the girl that the protagonist is angry at. Instead, these allusions to violence highlight that the male is, essentially, a very physical creature, while the woman, essentially, is a very emotional creature. For this reason, the games that the women play are emotional games. Yet, these games strike a physical key as well, insofar as they relate to the male’s physical sense. As a result, they use their emotional games to take advantage of the male’s naturally physical essence. This disparity between the male and female is where I think Weiland gets the title from, “Sex Type Thing.” In this song, Weiland explains how unfortunate it would be if the male were equally opportunistic as the female, insofar as the protagonist humoring the idea of using his physical essence in a similar way to how the woman uses her emotional prowess. That’s the irony: The male only threatens physical violence, while the woman is committing emotional violence.

This song sums up why men are, traditionally, nicer than woman when it comes to relationships. There are far more instances of women exerting emotional violence on males than males exerting physical violence on women. Now, in no way, shape, or form would I EVER encourage males to bring physical violence to females. Instead, I would suggest that women should stop the emotional violence, which society has constructed to appear less severe than physical violence. I would assert that it tends to be more damaging; physical wounds heal much faster than emotional wounds.

A man wandered to the edge of the earth and shouted out: 

“Is there any justice in the world? Any magnitude of fairness whatsoever?”

But after saying it, he heard no answer — only a light breeze rustling the trees behind him.

————————————————

I guess today fairness occupied my mind. What is fairness? How does one define fairness? Is fairness really important?

Let’s take that last question first, because it’s good to motivate an investigation before beginning it. Most of us take for granted that fairness is a good thing. I would be hard pressed to think of any sane person that would disagree with this. Yet, let’s face it: Life isn’t fair. Even some of those programs designed to make life fairer only create more unfairness. A prime example is affirmative action. It’s designed to make being hired fairer for minorities. Yet, it results in reverse discrimination in the long-run, so the fairness of some is being sacrificed to help the fairness of others.

Perhaps it would be enlightening to imagine a world where everything somehow was fair. Surely this is a utopian dream, and could never take reality. But if we realize such an idealized world, I think that most would agree that it would be pretty nice. And a world where nothing is fair would be pretty crappy. So I think it is safe to assert that fairness is important.

Okay, we probably decided that a bit too hastily; I haven’t even given a definition of fairness. Right now I’m just working with a vague intuitive notion. I’ll define fairness as a situation in which a person gets his/her fair due. Okay, that’s probably not helpful – what’s a ‘fair due’? This is what is deserved. A villain, for instance, deserves something bad, while a hero deserves something good. So fairness would bring each of them very different things under my definition, determined by his/her actions and character.

Alas, I am not sure I am happy with this definition. Under this definition, a murderer would deserve to be murdered. She would deserve death as a direct consequence of my definition. It happens that I do not believe in the death penalty; thus, I might have a problem accepting my definition. Even with this thought though, I am not sure that I would disagree that the murder deserves death. Instead, I would disagree that other people have a right to give bring this punishment upon her. So I am happy with this definition after all.

This discussion has been a good start. Perhaps tomorrow if I feel up to it, I will get less theoretical with fairness and start applying it to the real world and see where this definition gets me. I have a hunch I will be disappointed!

The past few weeks have been very enlightening for a number of reasons. I think I have learned two important lessons during this time. One lesson was about regret and the other was about expectation. 

Let’s start with expectation, because what I will explain has implications for regret. We all have expectations. We may expect to do well on a test, having studied hard for it. We may expect someone to react to news in a certain way. The list goes on. At any rate, I have decided that expectations are bad. This might seem strange at first: We have so many expectations in our life that it would be impossible to get rid of them all. This is probably true, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try.

What’s so wrong with expectation? It sets us up for disappointment. When things don’t turn out how you expected them to, it either disappoints you, makes you happy, or affects you in some other way. But imagine if you did not have any expectation: You would not be disappointed if things turned out badly, but if they turned out well you would still be happy. Without the expectation, you win either way; with expectation you may be disappointed.

Moreover I would argue that ridding oneself of expectations will also make him/her appreciate life more, especially the little things. Although it’s an extreme example, you expect the sun to rise in the morning; thus, you take it completely for granted. But if you did not have this expectation, you might wake up each morning and happily remark: “Look, the sun rose again today. How wonderful!” Okay, maybe this isn’t the best example, but surely you see what I mean, and this idea could be applied to a number of other similar things.

Next I want to talk about regret. Most people would agree that regret is never pleasant. Whenever you wish you had done things differently, it usually means you think you made a mistake, which tends to be negative. So I don’t think I need to do much convincing that regret is bad.

Instead of wasting my time trying to convince anyone that regret is bad, I’d rather talk about how to avoid it. So how does one avoid regret? A great way to start is by taking my advice above: Do not have expectations. As soon as you place an expectation on something you judge that situation. For instance, if you expect a situation to turn out a certain way, and if the way you expect it to turn out has negative consequences, then you will avoid that situation. Thus, if you find out afterwards that this particular situation would have actually led to a positive consequence, then you will regret acting as you did. But if you never had the expectation in the first place, then you would have done whatever it is you would have avoided, and the positive consequence would have been yours.

Now this might seem problematic. If you had no expectation for a given situation and it did turn out to have a negative consequence, then you might have avoided it, and thus, avoided the negative consequence. But this view is flawed: If you had no expectation in the first place, then the negative consequence would not feel negative, because you never expected it be positive in the first place! I spoke about this phenomenon above.

I separate regret specifically because I believe that it is one of the worst feelings there is. Regret occurs when you could have been part of something great, but for whatever reason (probably a fear resulting from an expectation of a negative consequence) you chose not to. Don’t do that. Don’t have any regrets. A life without regret and without expectation is a life where any sadness that exists only comes from external sources. This is a life where one lives to the fullest capacity and you guarantees that anything s/he has the ability to affect will turn out positively.

Well, I did it: I got through another Valentine’s Day. It was definitely trying at times, but I made sure that when I walked on the bridge over the gorge, I walked toward the left side of the sidewalk – away from the rail. But those rocks and ice-cold water sure did look tempting!

Valentine’s Day is, without question, the stupidest holiday imaginable. And I’m not just saying that because I don’t have a girlfriend. Let’s consider four possible scenarios:

i) You have a significant other who you are madly in love with.
- In this scenario you certainly don’t need a special day to express your love for one another, right? You do that daily – you’re madly in love.

ii) You have a significant other who you aren’t really in love with anymore – the thrill is gone.
- While this is a sad situation, Valetine’s Day ain’t gonna help. If you’re married, you need to get with the program and get them divorce papers signed. If you’re just dating, then move on. Valetine’s Day will just make things increasingly awkward for the both of you. If you express your love it will be fake, and you will be lying. (Hallmark does, however, make a killing on these kind of people.)

iii) You have a significant other who you aren’t really in love with, but like them for OTHER reasons, if you know what I mean.
- In this scenario you certainly don’t need a special day to express your love, because it’s superficial. And you certainly don’t need a special day to express something ELSE because I’m sure you do enough of that already in this kind of relationship.

iv) You do not have a significant other.
- In this scenario you CLEARLY don’t need a day to remind you that you’re alone.

This exhausts all possibilities that people might be in. And you’ll notice that in all possibilities the existence of Valentine’s Day was utterly useless. Since everyone belongs to one of these four categories and no one in any of the four categories needs Valentine’s Day, we can conclude that Valentine’s Day serves no useful purpose for anyone. So why the hell do we have it? Of course, it’s commercialized, and stupid people think it’s cute.

I also find the existence of Valentine’s Day particularly harmful. It is the only holiday that is openly exclusionary. Think about it: There is no other holiday that someone does not have the ability to celebrate. This even holds for religious holidays. If you’re bummed that you can’t celebrate Hanukkah because you’re not Jewish, go to your local synagogue and convert. With Valentine’s Day, however, it’s not like you can just be assigned a significant other, or walk down to the local Walmart and pick one up (well kind of, but that doesn’t count). It doesn’t work that way. As a result, it cannot be celebrated by those who do not conform to its standard.

Finally, if you already have a significant other, you’re hardly in need a holiday that is intended to bring you more happiness. Instead, the people without significant others should have a day to bring them happiness, because they must have less than those who are in relationships. Make sense? I think so. Maybe we can start a new day for singles and call it “Egg Couples Day”. Anyone who’s single can go around and throw eggs at couples all day long, whether they see them holding hands, necking in the hallway, or just walking together. Now THAT’S a holiday that I’ll endorse. And the couples probably won’t care too much, because they’ll just blame it on jealousy, which is true. It’s a win-win situation!

So next year, on February 14th, don’t celebrate Valentine’s Day. Instead help me to get Egg Couples Day to catch on. I’ll even buy you the eggs.