The Daily Procrastinator

Hello again, procrastinators! This wrap-up will bring you up to speed on what’s been happening here at The Daily Procrastinator for the last two weeks. Normally, as you’ve noticed by now, I’m sure, there’s a weekly wrap-up in your email every weekend. Last weekend, that didn’t happen. I procrastinated. Surely you knew that was a possibility. TDP has been as busy as ever in the past two weeks, and this is your chance to make sure that you’ve read every tasty bit. Let’s take it one week at a time, shall we?

March 16 – March 20

The week began with two posts by TallGirl, addressing first the dust-covered rollerblades she discovered while cleaning her garage, and then the combined narcissism and bad PR decisions of A-Fraud.

After many, many hours of celebrating Irish heritage, BigRedPoet (who’s German and French Canadian, by the way) published Part 1 of the beer-fueled St. Patrick’s Day adventure, chronicling the daylight hours and early evening. Part 2, which is perhaps slightly less coherent, details the happenings of the late evening and pursuant VERY early morning. Because she’s such a helpful friend, TallGirl offered a few hangover cures for anyone whose St. Patrick’s Day celebrations got out of hand.

The week ended with both lasciviousness and laughs as TallGirl wrote about her recent hot upskirt experience, and the newest Procrastinator, Marmite, bemoaned the unfortunate truth that Snuggies are taking over the world.

This break between weeks is brought to you by a grumpy, land-based koala bear. His name is Jeff.

March 23 – March 27

TallGirl started the week by wondering how FaceBook can simultaneously inspire curiosity, nostalgia, and low-level retrograde anger. As someone whose face has not been booked, I’m tempted to go sign up, just to observe this curious phenomenon.

On Tuesday, BigRedPoet offered a review of the Elton John and Billy Joel concert that he and FlashCap attended in Houston. As it turns out, two straight men can attend such a concert without the benefit of female companionship and still have a GREAT time.

Wednesday’s post was drawn from a discussion thread about important childhood memories. Several of the Procrastinators offered interesting tidbits from their young lives. Check it out, and get to know your favorite Procrastinator just a little bit better!

On Thursday, FlashCap expressed disbelief and outrage at a remarkably ignorant news article written by an ESPN reporter and posted on the company’s website. You’ve got to read it to believe it. As FlashCap seethed over the incompetence of paid professionals, TallGirl realized that Spring (the wily bugger) had sneaked up on her while she wasn’t watching. When it jumped out and yelled, “Surprise!“, the resulting joy turned into a TDP post.

BigRedPoet discovered something disturbing on Friday. While he was procrastinating by watching YouTube videos, he discovered that the Starburst Berries & Cream commercial that he found so offensive the first time had been reborn in a techno-remix version. Yikes.

Visit The Daily Procrastinator at any of the links above and sign up to receive daily email updates so you never miss an article!

The Daily Procrastinator: Contributing to the Dramatic Reduction of Your Personal Productivity

There is no mistaking the serious weirdness of Facebook.  I’m all for connecting with my current friends, and even friends from my past, however estranged we may have become as a result of time and distance.  Even exes.  I’m so totally, completely fine with exes.  And the people I met senior year of high school when I started hanging out with the theater crowd and working the ticket booth on performance nights.  And even my college roommate that I more or less haven’t spoken to since we had that blowup fight sophomore year.  I’m cool with that.  I had some sort of connection with all of these people.

But what I still can’t seem to get over are the people from high school — the popular, student council, homecoming court kids — who acted as though I was invisible for four years.  Why on earth are these people sending me friend requests?  How do they even remember my name?  And if you couldn’t manage a “hello” during the four years we sat next to each other in homeroom, why on earth are you so interested in finding out what I’m up to now?

And they’re not just friending me.  They’re tagging me in all sorts of lists to find out what books I’ve read, or 25 random things about me, or whether or not I’ve ever been to jail.  I just can’t understand it.  Are they sitting there with a yearbook, searching for everyone alphabetically, regardless of relationship?  Do they have any memories of me whatsoever?  Does that guy remember turning me down flat when I asked him to the sophomore dance, telling me that he had “someone else in mind”?

For as infrequently as I think about high school, I also seem to have pretty distinct memories of it, and I just wonder if everyone else does, too.  I have no illusions that we’re the same people that we were at 15 or 18.  I’m certainly not the same shy, insecure girl that I was, and I don’t expect that anyone else reflects what they were then, either.

Maybe that’s the point of Facebook.  Maybe it doesn’t matter where you’ve come from or if you’ve lived parallel yet completely separate lives.  Maybe it exists to remind you of how far you’ve come, and help you to appreciate the value of the true friends you’ve made along the way.

Across the country, hundreds of thousands of college students will be going on spring break this week. Let’s face it, procrastinators, those kids are a menace. Don’t go out there and risk your sanity among the inebriated youth; stay safely indoors and read The Daily Procrastinator. It’s the safer choice. We’ll have new content for you each and every day. In case you missed anything last week, let’s take a look back.

After viewing The Watchmen, Flash Cap offered his critique of Hollywood’s current movie rating system. Full frontal nudity is full frontal nudity, whether it’s computer generated or not…right?

TallGirl overheard a conversation at her local coffee shop during which several young women discussed the fallout between Rihanna and Chris Brown. What she heard blew her mind, and it will likely blow yours, too. Later in the week, TallGirl examined the xCount phenomenon on FaceBook, and she wrapped up her contributions by confessing her fear of treadmills.

BigRedPoet helped the world celebrate the 69th birthday of Chuck Norris this week by examining the star’s odd brand of fame. A few days later, he offered some pointers to help procrastinators everywhere polish their spoken English to a beautiful shine.

Visit The Daily Procrastinator at any of the links above and sign up to receive daily email updates so you never miss an article!

The Daily Procrastinator: Contributing to the Dramatic Reduction of Your Personal Productivity

Ah, prom night: the source of many exes.

Ah, Facebook: the place where the past meets present, sometimes with jarring results.  Childhood friends, recent colleagues and family members mingle in a “worlds collide” sort of way.  It’s a fascinating social experiment.

I was chatting with a Facebook friend/colleague recently when he asked me, “What’s your xCount?”  This was his own personal term — one that I must admit that I love — for the exes that have crawled out of the woodwork and once again made themselves part of your life.  

I scanned my list of friends.  ”I’ve got two… and a half,” I told him.  He told me that you can’t count anyone as a half, but I think that a prom date who appeared in pictures but actually spent the night sitting in the lobby outside the hotel ballroom qualifies as something less than a full xCount point.  And believe me, after that fiasco at 17, I was thoroughly shocked to see that he wanted to connect with me.

He had four full-fledged exes on his list, not including one whose request he rejected outright.  ”Sometimes, the requests are just too creepy.”  Many of my friends agree.  There was the one who was contacted by the guy who stalked her after they broke up.  Another got a request from the girlfriend who had certain… uh… shall we call them “unique” sexual proclivities?  And what about that guy you hooked up with after the frat party sophomore year?  From first loves to major heartbreaks, they’re all out there, and they just might be looking for you.

Who's in my inbox? I can't bring myself to look.

What prompts exes to want to get in touch again, especially those that you haven’t spoken to in a decade or more?  As for mine, I still have a good relationship — albeit separated by time and distance — with one of them, and accepted the second just out of a ridiculous sense of curiosity.  You know the kind.  They’re the ones whose request is met with audible talking back to the computer.  ”Oh my god, John Doe?  How the hell did he find me?”  These requests are met with a connection, a few obligatory messages back and forth, and the obligatory Googling of their name to figure out what they’ve been doing since the 90s.

His story was slightly different.  He had one with fond memories who had sent the occasional Christmas card, one who had been a complete WTF entry, and two who were clearly taking Google stalking to the next level.  ”I don’t mind connecting with them,” he said, “but it’s a little weird that they have to respond to everything I post, as though they’re spending their days just waiting for me to update my status.”  Weird, indeed.

It seems that nearly everyone has an xCount greater than zero.  An informal survey of friends reveals xCount numbers between 3 and 9, each bringing varying levels of discomfort and baggage with them.  One, however, through the benefits of a new married surname and a move to a new continent has managed to avoid the xCount concept altogether, and was stunned to learn that I had an xCount.  

“I mean it’s lovely that they want to get in touch and it speaks volumes about your effect on their lives ….and yet: eeeeek.  I always wondered if I was crazy/unfriendly for not wanting contact or if the crazies were the ones who did.”

There’s no shortage of posts about this very topic.  This one talks about being the one that’s obsessed with the ex on Facebook.  This one talks about the shock of seeing the photo of the ex appear in the inbox.  Yet another talks about why your ex should never see your Facebook account.

Should you friend exes?  Only you know for sure.  Of course, you could always accept their invitation, learn everything you need to know about them, and then stealthily “unfriend” the person, leaving them to discover your passive-aggressive acceptance and rejection at their leisure.  But does that make you more or less creepy than the creepy ex that you’re trying to avoid?