So now you can find out how many times I've used dirty words here over the years.

And also see what a right-leaning d-bag I used to be.

Comments: 0 Comments.

After I graduated, I went on my first road trip to Chicago. While there, I had a real camera but I took a few pictures with the phone for the heck of it.

Here is one picture I took:

That's taken from the Sears Tower (now Willis Tower) observation deck.

That is the actual size of the photo. Not resized or anything.

Now here's a picture I took with my $200 phone yesterday:

That's not full size. Here is a larger version, but Flickr wont let me upload the full size image without paying for Flickr Pro. The actual image from the camera is 2.5x larger.

Here is a comparison of the image dimensions between the two cameras.

All I'm saying is, my phone has a good camera.

Comments: 2 Comments.

Dale spun around in the computer chair to face the couch. "Did you get it?" he asked.

Mark smiled, reaching into his left pants pocket. "Had it sent to the office." After some trouble reconciling the poorness of his posture and the tightness of his jeans, he was finally able to draw a slick, black-and-silver phone from his pocket.

"Awesome," Dale said, rolling the chair closer until the carpet wouldn't allow it.

Mark spun it around in his fingers a few times, before handing to Dale. Dale admired every inch of it, examining it like a rare specimen.

"Any problems getting it activated?" Dale asked, turning the on the screen and swiping a finger across to unlock it.

"No," Mark said. "Pretty simple, this time."

Dale stared at the screen, wide-eyed. "This is so damn cool," he said. He flipped through a few pages of the installed apps.

"Yeah," Mark said. "Wifi and 3G internet, GPS for maps, video calling. It's the future, man."

"Totally," Dale said. "If I could go back in time and show this to my twelve-year-old self, he/I would go nuts."

"Hey, yeah," Mark said. "We should do that."

"Yeah," Dale chuckled, "sure."

"No, look," Mark said, walking over and taking the phone. He flipped a through a few pages of apps and pointed at an icon labeled, "Time Machine."

"Oh, hey," Dale said, "this one has Time Machine data backup service?"

"No," Mark said. "It's an actual time machine."

Dale looked at Mark for fourteen seconds. "...What?"

"Yeah, just... here. Hang on."

Mark pressed the icon to launch the app. The screen filled with text. "Just skip through these warnings.... and.... here, see?"

On the screen was was a simple, plain-text readout of the current date and time, and below it was a dial to select a new date and time.

"What year was it when you were twelve?" Mark asked.

"What, are you serious?" Dale asked, incredulous.

Mark didn't reply. He was busy with math. "Er... 1995, right?" He spun the numbers until the date was changed to 1995. "Sweet, here we go..."

"Wait, wait, hang on." Dale said. "What the crap are you talking about?"

Mark looked confused. "What?"

"Time machine?" Dale said.

"Yeah," Mark said. "Why not?"

Dale thought about it, then shrugged. "Whatever."

"Alright, then," Mark said. "Here we go, for real." He pressed the big red button on the screen.

Then they were falling.

They landed on a tar and gravel roof. Dale on his stomach, Mark on his back.

"Ow," Dale said, his face pressed against the roof.

Mark sat up. "What was that? What happened."

Dale spun around, wiped away the pebbles stuck to his face, then stood up. "Where are we?"

Mark got up as well, then walked to the edge of the roof. "This is our street," he said, looking down at the ground. "This is our corner. This is where are apartment is."

"Or will be," Dale said. "Our apartment building is, what, ten years old? There used to be a pizza place here."

"We are now on top of said pizza place," Mark said, leaning awkwardly over the edge, looking at a sign that said "Rizzato's."

"So we're in 1995?" Dale asked.

"Looks like," Mark replied.

"Crazy."

"We probably should have done that from a ground-floor location," Mark said. "It's lucky there was a building here before, otherwise we would have fallen three stories instead of one."

"Yeah," Dale said. "That's what I'm focusing on now."

The two argued for a bit about the mechanics of time travel, the nature of existence, the possible rules of causality and the ramifications of altering the space-time continuum. Deciding that they couldn't undo the entirety of existence with a ninety-nine-cent app, they decided they would probably be fine if they kept their visit brief and didn't kill anybody likely to become important.

"You probably should have read those warning screens," Dale said as the two walked toward Dale's childhood home. "It might have said something about butterfly effects and whether they exist."

"Come on," Mark said. "Nobody reads those things, so when they made the program they had to have known people would skip through it all. If it were dangerous, they'd make you take a quiz or get a license or something."

Dale had been wondering if his mother, in 1995, would be able to see him, fifteen years older, and recognize that he was her son, who, to her, was only twelve. It was a bizarre hypothetical, and frankly it hurt his head more than the time-paradox stuff. He decided it would be best to avoid his 1995 mother altogether, so when the two arrived at his 1995 home they snuck through the back door and into the basement, where a twelve-year-old Dale was playing video games.

"Hey," adult Dale said.

Younger Dale paused the game and looked over. "Hey," he said. "Who are you guys?"

Dale knew that he couldn't rightly just say he was from the future, the younger version of himself wouldn't believe him. He'd have to ease him into it, and find some way to convince the younger him that he wasn't lying by using knowledge only he, fifteen years later, would know. During the walk, when he wasn't thinking about whether his mom would have recognized him, he was thinking about that.

"Well," Dale said to himself. "It's hard to say, exactly, but basically--"

"--He's you from the future and I'm his-slash-your friend from the future," Mark said. "Hey, is that Super Nintendo?"

Young Dale looked at the two for a moment. "Me, from the future?"

Adult Dale cringed. "Yeah," he said. "Sorta."

Young Dale furrowed his brow for a second. "Well if that's true... what girl do I like right now?"

"Ah, jeez," Mark said. "I didn't think you'd be quizzing yourself. We should have prepared for this for a bit. I know I don't remember anything about the girls that I--"

"Becca Layton," adult Dale said, to his younger version's surprise.

"Wait," Mark said. "Becca Layton... isn't she that girl on Facebook you're always--"

"Shh--er--ah--shubbaduh," adult Dale interrupted.

Young Dale was convinced. "So do I ever have a chance with her?"

Mark was just as curious.

Adult Dale stammered for a bit, "Er, I don't think.. uh, spoiler alert. Yeah, that. I'm not here to; that is, I don't want to change the way things unfold."

"Isn't that what we're here for?" Mark asked, holding up the cell phone.

"Well, yeah, but that's... for that, we can be mysterious and then leave. I can't tell him how my actual life turns out."

"Whatever, space cadet," Mark said, handing adult Dale the phone. "Just blow his mind with the thing so we can get out of here. I'm having legitimate concerns now about this thing's battery life. I didn't bring a charger, and there aren't going to be any made for about a decade."

"Right, that." Dale took the phone, switched the screen on, and walked over to his younger self.

"Basically," he started, "I came back in time because this phone just came out and I knew it would rock your world."

Dale flipped through the pages of apps.

"Cool," young Dale said. "Touch screen."

"I know!" older Dale said. "Touchscreen stuff barely existed back... now, Mark."

Mark nodded. He was checking out the Super Nintendo games on the shelf. "SWAT Kats, awesome."

Older Dale continued with the demonstration, "and, obviously, you can make calls with it. Here, I'll call and order a pizza." Dale tried to dial a number, but there was no service.

"Oh, right," he said. "Cellular systems were analog until a few years from now, and I don't even know if Mark's carrier even exists yet."

"Lion King?" Mark said. "You had The Lion King for SNES?"

"Hey," young Dale said. "That game is cool. Right?"

Older Dale looked away, then back at the phone. "Anyway, well you can get on the internet using wifi--- wait, 802.11 wireless networking doesn't exist until, like, 2002. Crap."

"Very impressive tech demo so far," Mark said. "Hey, you don't have any Final Fantasy games here."

"Final what?" young Dale asked. Mark's eyes widened.

"--Anyway," adult Dale interjected. "Well, it's got GPS, at least, so the phone can actually tell you exactly where you are..."

Dale launched the navigation app, but nothing happened.

"Aw, hell," Dale said. "GPS doesn't go online for civilian use for another three or four years."

"What's GPS mean?" young Dale asked.

Older Dale just looked at him. "Well the communication systems might not exactly be available to show off, but you can at least see how it plays music and movies. Mark, did you put any media on here?"

Mark shook his head. "I was going to sync it with my home PC."

Older Dale's head dropped. "Alright, so this thing can't exactly do anything right now, but you should still be impressed. Look how small it is, and this thing's got more processing power than... crap, I don't even have a computer yet in 1995."

Mark was reading the back of the Homeward Bound VHS cassette case. "When does the PlayStation come out?"

"I don't... I don't remember," older Dale said. "This is very distressing. Look, kid. Look at this thing! It's so small. Be impressed!"

"Yeah, it's cool I guess."

Older Dale's eyes narrowed. "You guess? This thing can hold, like.. several thousand songs."

"For what?"

"For... for songs. For listening to!"

"Who needs to listen to that many songs?"

"That's not the point! Look at this thing, it is a technical marvel!"

"If you say so," the kid said. "I like my Nintendo."

"Yeah, well... wait until the Wii comes out. Huge disappointment."

Younger Dale laughed. "The wee comes out of what?"

Older Dale took a long, deliberate breath. "I hate you, me."

Younger Dale shrugged.

Older Dale turned to Mark. "Well, this has been terrifically stupid." He handed Mark the phone. "Let's go back now."

"Finally," Mark said.

He flipped through the pages to find the Time Machine app and launched it. Dale looked around. "We should probably go outside, though. I don't even know who owns this house now."

"Err..." Mark said. "This sucks."

"Well, not now, I mean," Dale said. "I mean, I don't know who owns this house in our time. Our now. Not now-now."

Mark wasn't responding. He was staring at the phone's screen.

"What is it?" Dale asked.

"I read the warning screen this time," he said.

"Yeah? What? Crap. Did we screw up the future?"

"Nnnno," Mark said. "It's not about that. It says, 'Warning: Time travel feature requires wifi internet connection and GPS location detection. Do not travel to a time without these services'."

"Oh," Dale said. "Yeah, that sucks."

Comments: 1 Comments.

I took the above photo from work with my new iPhone 4. I took some more on the way home today.

It's very, very nice to have a phone that can take a half-decent picture. I moved to this city primarily because I love taking photos of it so much, but I rarely have a proper digital camera with me, so all I'm left with is my phone. The iPhone 3GS had a lot better camera than previous iPhones, but it was still pretty sub-par as cameras go. The iPhone 4's camera is comparable (note strategic use of word) to actual point-and-shoot digital cameras, so I'm excited at the prospect of being able to shoot quick pictures of things without them looking embarrassing on a computer monitor.

One thing I love about taking pictures with an iPhone, as opposed to most digital cameras, is that the iPhone tags photos with the GPS coordinates of where the photo was taken, so inside software like iPhoto (or, now, on the iPhone itself) I can see all of my photos represented on a map. That makes it easy to, say, find all the pictures I took while in Grant Park, or the photos I took while at my brother's place in Maryland. I find that feature so appealing that even when I have a superior camera with me I'll choose to use the iPhone so that I'll automatically have that location information stored.

Lines

I waited in line for four hours to get my iPhone 4 last night. I had a reservation, and reservations expired at midnight, so if I didn't deal with the line to get the phone yesterday, it would have been at least a month before I could have gotten one. I checked out the line at the Michigan Avenue Apple Store on my lunch break, and it was about 5-6 hours long. When I eventually got in line after work, it was a bit shorter. By that point, only people with reservations were allowed in (no "walk-ins"). It's amazing that a phone can draw that kind of line.

Apple handled the line rather well. It wrapped entirely around the block, but there were store employees all around, making sure that curbs, entrances, and sidewalk crossings weren't blocked and answering people's questions. Apple even paid for a local burger restaurant to give anybody in line free burgers, lemonade, and milkshakes, on top of having plenty of bottled water to go around, and for the first half of the day there was coffee and iced tea. When I was in line, a radio station was handing out bottles of SoBe Lifewater. I felt very looked-after.

Prior to this, the only line I'd been in close to that length was for roller coasters. I figure that if people can reasonably wait 2-3 hours for a ride you'll experience for about 77 seconds, the same amount of time for a phone I'll enjoy for at least a year can't be that absurd. The people nearby in line were pretty friendly and talkative. There was a nice mix of people, not the sort of sweaty geeks you'd expect to see lined up for a product launch. The guy behind me was editor-in-chief of his law school's Law Review.

For the record, I waited about an hour to get an Xbox 360 (which I don't really regret) a few days after launch, and about 40 minutes for a Nintendo DS (which I regret entirely).

Face-Time

The addition of a front-facing camera and a built-in protocol for video calling is nifty, but right now I'm like the one guy in 1987 who owned a fax machine and couldn't wait for someone else to get one so he could make use of it. Since iPhone 4 has only been out for a day, and only people with iPhone 4 can use Face-Time, there's nor many people for me to Face-Time with.

I suspect that in a year or so, the video calling environment will be a bit more accessible. Hopefully, Apple will add in support for people using their iChat software on Macs (which is in itself a rather well-performing video chatting utility), so that (so to speak) people will realize that they had fax machines the whole time.

Long-term, though, I don't think video calling will ever catch on in the way that the past's version of the future predicted. Video chatting requires you to worry about how your face and hair look, and it requires your full attention, whereas you can be naked and rollerblading and hold a vocal conversation over a phone perfectly well. Our laziness and vanity will probably keep widespread video chatting on hold for quite a while, until we've reached a point where shame and privacy are no longer common traits among humans.

Screens

Much hay has been made over the iPhone 4's buzzword "retina display." A previous iteration of me would have spent time researching the specific pixel matrix resolution mathematics involved in the newfangled screen to formulate a solid opinion regarding whether Apple really accomplished a legitimate feat of engineering, or just hobbled together someone else's invention and put a marketing spin on it, but at this point in my life I don't or can't care.

All I know is that the screen is so crisp, my brain can't process it. It's crisper than any display (computer or handheld) I've ever seen. Text isn't represented on the screen, it exists on the screen. The words just pop out at you. Comparisons to printed paper are meaningless, because the concepts are entirely different. Text on the iPhone 4's display is a whole new kind of thing.

The Catch-22

I think the mostly-plastic iPhone 3G and 3GS were kind of ugly from the back, but didn't mind so much because the back was always hidden by the various multi-layered cases I bought for them. It was in my interest to protect the iPhones from the various drops-on-concrete I subjected them to, so the ugly back wasn't an issue.

The iPhone 4, however, is much better-looking a phone. It's a rather gorgeous little brick of steel and glass. Sometimes I just look down at it, sitting on my desk. Hello, little phone. That beauty comes at a price, though. The glass front and back means it's got twice as much surface area susceptible to catastrophic breakage.

That means that it's in the phone's best interest to get some kind of protective case for it. But it's in my best interest to leave it naked so I an continue to ogle its curves and edges. Because it's so pretty, I don't want to cover it; but because it's so delicate, I want to protect it. I feel like the parent of a teenager struggling to find the right balance between overprotective and irresponsible.

The Verdict

Upgrading from the iPhone 3G to the 3GS had a very sharp, immediate payoff in that apps ran twice as fast. It's an easy selling point: iPhone 3GS is faster.

Upgrading from the iPhone to the iPhone 3G also had an immediate, obvious payoff: it had 3G cellular internet, which was much faster than EDGE, plus it had actual GPS. Easy selling point: iPhone 3G has faster internet.

Upgrading to the iPhone 4 doesn't really have that wham-bam payoff. It has a lot of improvements and niceities, but nothing that gets all up in your face and tells you how stupid you've been for having a crummy ol' 3GS. It's faster, sure, but not several times faster. It doesn't have faster cellular internet. It has a much better camera, and a crazy-awesome screen, but those aren't huge selling points to the general public. Basically, it's just a ton of gentle improvements upon the former phone. Its selling point: iPhone 4 is just better.

Comments: 1 Comments.

And then I moved here to Chicago and I felt like the people from back home would probably have a slight, slight interest in what was going on with me, but with a full time job it was hard to find the energy to write full-on blog posts, so Twitter it was.

When I decided that I was comfortable with it and that I wasn't going to drop it, I decided to make my tweets get pumped directly onto my blog here so that I wouldn't have to explain to my parents what/who/how/why/where a Twitter was, and just to generally make life easier. Also because I like to make things that do things with data from other places. It's my thing.

So I took some code I'd made for a client website to pull in tweets, changed a few things, and plopped it onto this site here.

That's worked out pretty well, but my nature doesn't allow me to let a good thing remain good when I could screw around with it and make it better, so I just added a few more features:

Firewall Bypassery

A few people whose workplaces have firewalls that block Twitter have told me that this prevents the display of Twitter content here. That makes sense, because my script is just telling your browser to get a data feed from Twitter and then interpret it, but it also cheesed me off pretty hard. I didn't like the idea of my website breaking for people at work because of IT policies put in place to prevent secretaries from wasting time at Friendface and Twitbook and such.

So I've added a thing that tries to detect when the script is having trouble fetching the tweets, and then will (unobtrusively) ask the user if they're behind a firewall. Answering "Yes" will attempt to bypass any firewalls using a homespun proxy. I may remove the whole confirmation thing and just attempt the proxy automatically if the first attempt fails, but I liked the look of the confirmation message...

Geolocation/Stalker Enhancements

Twitter recently started allowing for tweets to be encoded with the geo-coordinates of whereever you happened to be when you sent that message (if whatever you're using to send the message allows for it). My phone allows for it, so when I tweet from my phone it includes the location. Even though it kind of creeps me out, I thought it was cool enough that I now display any geo-location information that may exist along with a tweet. You may, on certain messages, see something like this:

The general location of the message is displayed in text form, and if you click the location (or the little pin icon) it will take you to a Google Map showing exactly (exaaaactly) where I was. I think this can supply a little context to messages, the benefit of which should hopefully outweigh the creepiness. Please do not use this information to murder me.

Image Auto-Thumbnailing

Basically, if I link to a TwitPic or Flickr image in a tweet, the script will try to generate a thumbnail for them. Yeah. Fancy stuff.

Comments: 0 Comments.

Therein I state the following to rationalize the correct formating of Tony Stark's alter-ego, Iron Man:

He's not Ironman or Iron-Man, though. He's not half-iron, half-man and he's not just a guy who is really into iron. He is an iron man.

Clearly one of the film series' stars needs to read that post (or read it again!), because she doesn't seem to have a firm grasp on the rules.

In her weird half-blog, half-magazine (blog-magazine), Gwyneth Paltrow cannot remember how to format the name of the movie she's starring in. In this startlingly detailed article about how she got in shape for her return to the role of Pepper Potts (the only female comic book character with red hair!), she screws things up from line one:

I have just traversed the globe doing promotion for Ironman 2, getting asked the same question repeatedly: how did I get in shape for the movie?

No.

Wrong.

Iron Man 2.

Simple.

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Growing up, my older siblings and other people whose job it was to highlight my flaws would very often tell me to stop mumbling. A lot of times, I'll say something incredibly funny and anybody who isn't within four feet of me will see the other people laughing and say, "What, what did he say?"

I speak at a rather low volume. I won't deny that. There are various contributing factors to this, but key among them is the simple fact that I have super powers.

My hearing and vision are above average. My eyes see at a higher "framerate" than most people, and because of that I can often see things that other people aren't supposed to. No, not ghosts. Halogen lights have an unusual pulsing flicker going on all the time. Other people don't notice it, but to me, they tend to make everything look a little bit like a strobe light. This doesn't really bother me anymore, and it doesn't affect other people in any way more significant in that they occasionally don't understand when I try to explain why certain department stores give me headaches.

My hearing is what causes the most problems. I can hear slightly higher frequencies than are typical (those dog whistle things sound like a mosquito flying past my ear), but I also just generally hear better than most. Because of that, when I speak at a volume that seems appropriate for my superhero ears, nobody else can hear me.

If I talk at a volume other people seem to talk at, I feel like I'm shouting. To me, most people seem like they're shouting all the time.

I'm not alone in this. My sister seems to be the same. Her and I can have a conversation in public that, to any observer, looks like we're either whispering or somehow reading eachother's lips. Somehow she learned to speak at a reasonable volume around other people, and I did not.

So, I get a lot of "what?"s and "stop mumbling"s. After a lifetime of this, I've grown to become pretty sensitive about being asked to repeat myself. I hate it. If I tell a joke (and if my mouth is open, I'm telling a joke) and somebody asks me to repeat it because they didn't hear my subsonic vocalizations, I almost always have to stop and let a bubbling range simmer down before then deciding if I can handle the shame of repeating myself for an audience of non-superhumans.

I can't decide if my intense negative reaction to being asked to repeat myself is a product of my sense of humor, or some kind of shame that I'd spoken incorrectly in the first place. As I've [over-]established, I make a particularly large deal out of being spontaneously funny. I don't tell "jokes," as it were, as much as I just say funny things appropriate to the situation. People tell me I should be a comedian at times, and I tell them that I never could, because comedians have to tell the same jokes over and over, and I feel like I've failed as a human if I use the same line for a laugh more than once.

If I crack off a one-liner and a few people didn't hear it, my repetition of will have lost half of its oomph because the context changed.

Or, as I said, it could be the shame. I have a weird mental self-defense protocol that tries to stop me from thinking about, or being aware of any negative aspect of myself. From 6th grade and all through high school, whenever someone made a fat joke to or about me, my brain would lock down for a moment and go through a little process of, "wait, he wasn't talking about me, because I'm not fat. He was talking about another guy, a guy who isn't here, because he's in another universe, but he looks like me, but he isn't me, but-- hey, pumpkin pie!"

It never actually hit me that I was fat until about a year ago when my doctor (of all people ) told me I could lose twenty pounds (or lose sixty pounds, as I eventually did).

Without the context of a joke to wash it away, there was no way my stupid brain could divert my attention from that.

And now that I'm working in an office where I sometimes have to tell people things that aren't jokes, them not being able to hear me becomes an actual problem. Only now do I have a volume problem that I cant rationalize away as other people simply not having super-hearing.

So now I have to remember, whenever I open my mouth, to talk about 20% louder than I think I should, even though it feels incredibly wrong.

I think I need a lozenge.

Comments: 6 Comments.

This only works when you actually come to this page. People reading via RSS won't get that amazing new feature.

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For serious. I'm an alien.

Meep morp.

I just said, "this banana smoothie needs fewer ingredients" in my planet's language.

Well, one of my planet's languages. Like yours, my home planet hasn't united into a common creed, so we all bunch up into communities with our own languages and customs. It can get pretty annoying, like how where I'm from it's normal to hold one of your proximal appendages up to your carapace when meeting someone new, but if you travel to Tfonk (as many people do between levels 178 and 179 of their primary education), they take grave offense to such a gesture. I'm not sure why. And don't get me started on their food.

Anyway, I just wanted to say what's up. Earth is cool, I guess. It was difficult adjusting to an oxygen-based atmosphere, since oxygen is a noxious and highly combustible element (where I'm from, it's like our gasoline), and your 7 PSi of air pressure was a bit of a hurdle, not to mention the fact that my perception of 7 dimensions can make it a little difficult to interact with you people and your meager 3, but I try to adapt.

OK, you got me. I'm not really an alien. April Fools and junk.

Unless I am an Alien and our equivalent of April 1st is when we are morally obligated to reveal any and all secrets. If that were the case, I don't know what would be the deal.

Comments: 1 Comments.

This is the first time I've been sick since I moved here, so naturally I'm light on supplies. I have Sudafed, the good stuff, the kind you have to ask for and show ID. I also have industrial strength throat lozenges, but fortunately I haven't developed a sore throat yet. If I do, I won't be a very happy camper.

What I hate most about being this kind of sick, this generic, ambiguous "sick" that doesn't really take a form other than feeling like your head's made of mashed potatoes and your nose gets stuffy, isn't the fact that my slightly higher than pedestrian understanding of anatomy and physiology makes me keenly aware of exactly what nasties have infiltrated my body and how.

No, what I hate most is the dilemma that Sudafed (pseudoephedrine) puts me into.

See, Sudafed (the real stuff) works really well. Really, really well. It makes sinus congestion go far, far away for several hours. The price of this is that while it's taking effect, it is impossible to sleep.

Not impossible to sleep like on Christmas eve where you can't keep your toes tucked under your covers. Impossible like, whatever biochemical process in the brain makes it physically possible to sleep stops working.

You don't get tired? No, you get tired. You lay in your bed, pull your blankets up to your chin, close your eyes, and wait. And wait.

You wait a long time.

You don't sleep, but you dream. It's only the sleepy-sleepy part of your brain that breaks, not the dreamy-dreamy part. You drift off, not quite lucid, but entirely aware of your existence while your mind puts on picture shows that never make sense, and after a few minutes you realize you've gone insane and the dream goes away, then there you are, again, in your bed, still awake.

So the dilemma placed at my feet by the pinacle of medical science is this: do you want to sleep, or do you want to breathe?

Breathing almost always wins.

Almost.

Comments: 1 Comments.

Lately I've been surprised how unfazed I've been by my birthdays, the random inconsequentiality of the numbers never amounting to a hill of beans to me. This one, though, I've been having trouble with.

I've officially exited my early twenties and entered my mid-twenties. Soon I will be in my late twenties, and then I will be thirty years old and I will have passed the point where being immature and indecisive can still be cute and not simply depressing.

I think what bothers me most is that the entirety of consumer media used to be targeted directly at 20-somethings. Every movie, TV show, or carbonated beverage produced was made with people my age in mind. I was looking forward to my twenties perhaps solely to be the center of so much advertisement attention.

Then something stupid happened. As soon as I turned 20, the new target demographic became teenagers. A few years later, the new new target demo became pre-teens. Now, all of modern culture is bundled and wrapped specifically for "tweens." How did this happen?

I blame those damn vampire books, but in general I try to ignore it altogether. It seems like now, the only people trying to sell me stuff are makers of manly body washes and high interest credit cards. Oh, and Miracle Whip. The only way I can express my individuality is to stop using mayonnaise and start using a similar product made with vinegar.

I think, in general, everybody my age is having a somewhat-similar experience. We were geared up to have taken over the world by this point, but nobody really cares about us, so the best we can do to make something of our lives is to wear too-tight flannel shirts and jeans made with 4% (or more) spandex and walk around Williamsburg with our unkempt beards and our Ayn Rand novels trying to think of something meaningful to say.

The thing that strikes me most about aging is that I always seem to be waiting for the moment to come where I feel like I know something. People older than me always seem to know things, and then I reach their age and realize I don't know anything yet. When my older brother was the age I am now, it seemed like there wasn't anything he didn't know about. I would have asked his advice on absolutely everything, because I was fourteen and he was twenty-four so he must have it all figured out by now. Well, here I am now, and if a fourteen year old asked me something I'm pretty sure I'd have nothing to tell him except something I'd heard in a movie or something. It's hard to dissuade someone of being young and stupid when I still feel young and stupid myself.

Maybe everybody is young and stupid up to the point where they're not, and that moment is when you realize that only people younger than you are the stupid ones. That happens to also be the moment when you forget all the things you used to do when you were young and become newly outraged that young people today are doing those same things. Also, you start watching Fox News, and you suddenly feel like having your shoes shined is a perfectly valid use of your time.

Comments: 4 Comments.

They... they dye the river. For St. Patricks. It's not always that gross-looking.

Comments: 1 Comments.

...the noise remains.

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Naturally, absolutely everything will be broken for a while. You'll get used to it, if you aren't already.

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Then, somewhere, I could hear the sound of any future children of mine being unborn.

Comments: 2 Comments.