Gym Class Zeroes

In case you missed it, Thursday, May 19th, 2011 was a dark, dark day.  Much like 11/13/2011, it's a date that will never make the pages of the history books, but a terrible tragedy struck the Minneapolis area:

The Gym, formerly the Twin Cities' top-ranked training center as rated by The Gym's former owner, was repossessed by the bank and shut down that morning.  The Gym's closure marked the sad end of a spectacular five year run with the only gym I'd ever known.  It didn't take me long after joining The Gym in the summer of 2006 to realize that I was in the right place--what that blandly-named building lacked in creativity, it made up for with a top-notch weightlifting environment.

During an otherwise quiet Saturday afternoon workout that summer, two police officers walked in, talked to the guy at the desk for a minute, then made their way over to a steroid freak on the incline bench. An officer walked up on each side of the bar, spotted the guy on his final rep, then one said, "you need to come with us."  The cops escorted the guy out of The Gym, his bag and chalk still sitting next to the bench. I knew I was a member of the best gym in the state. My opinion was solidified in the years that followed as I overheard countless conversations of gym members sharing stories of their prison experiences.

That's why I felt utterly hopeless and depressed when the bank shut the place down.  Where would I go?  What was I going to do after work every day?  Was I destined for afternoons of couch time, ice cream, and Oprah?  After some time off, a few of us former Gym members  exhausted all other options and reluctantly joined a Lifetime Fitness, trading power-lifters and ex-cons for soccer moms and accountants.

There's no doubt, The Gym's membership list included a cast of odd characters longer than the rap sheet of some if its longtime members. But in the nine months I've now spent at Lifetime, I've realized that for whatever reason, gyms inherently attract an incredible number of unusual members.  The specific oddities you'll experience may differ slightly depending on the type of gym you join, but as a universal gym rule, members seem to fall into a handful of stereotypical groups.  The following is my top ten list of weird gym people, in no particular order:

#1: The Count-Out-Louds

The count-out-louds (COLs) are a rare, but unfailingly annoying breed of gym member.  During a workout, a COL makes it his job to let everyone around him know exactly how many reps he's completed.  Don't get me wrong--you've gotta keep track of your reps during a workout, but most people are able to manage that complicated math in their minds...quietly. One particular COL at Lifetime seems to talk louder and louder as the set wears on, grimacing and exhausting himself until he's shouting unintelligible numbers at everyone around him.

#2: The Cheaters

Every gym has 'em--the people who load an insane amount of weight on a machine, then climb on and start exercising with the worst form or smallest range of motion humanly possible.  I can only assume that these people are trying to impress other gym members with their incredible feats of strength. My personal favorite is watching the guys who load twenty or more of the 45-pound plates on a leg press machine, then use their arms and/or hands to press on their legs and move the weight. Can the exercise still be called a leg press at that point?

The partial bicep curl also seems to be a favorite exercise among Cheaters, but I guess ignorance is bliss--who knew that the human elbow could bend beyond a 45 degree angle?  I'm also a huge fan of the Cheaters' infamous half-bench press.  After all, letting that barbell get anywhere near your chest is just too *$@^# risky!

#3: The Wanderers

You don't have be a life coach to know that focus and direction can be key difference-makers on the road to success in life...or success in workouts, for that matter.  That's why it's so sad to watch Wanderers during their painfully aimless workouts.  Veteran gym members walk into the gym every day with a specific plan in mind and concentrate on one or two major muscle groups during the workout--shoulders, legs, back...something.  Wanderers, on the other hand, treat the gym like a wine tasting, trying a little bit of everything and accomplishing absolutely nothing over the course of an hour.

This crowd tends to swell in population immediately after New Year's, during that painful ten-day stretch during which couch potatoes resolve to get in shape and then quickly reverse course and decide that fitness will be next year's resolution...again.  To help the process along, whenever I'm talking to friends at the gym in early January, I try to make loud, discouraging comments with the hope that these short-timers will overhear and start packing as quickly as possible, reducing the pointless January gym overcrowding.

#4: The Thieves
You can set your bag near it, you can leave a dumbbell on top of it, but nothing seems to stop bench thieves from working their magic.  It's nothing more than simple gym etiquette, really--before you start using a bench or machine, you ask the people around if anyone else is using it.  But some people choose to ignore this simple courtesy...and believe me, there's nothing more frustrating than returning from a 30-second trip to the water fountain to find a middle-aged woman using your bench as a magazine rack for her issue of Better Homes and Gardens while she does bicep curls with pink, one-pound dumbbells. This sort of thing happened from time to time at The Gym, but those occurrences seemed fewer and much farther between.  I guess you make it a point to learn gym etiquette when most of your fellow gym members have wrists the size of your thighs and aren't terribly concerned about the prospect of returning to prison.

#5: The Neat Freaks and The Slobs

Another important lesson in gym etiquette: clean off the equipment after you use it.  But it's important to strike a balance, because there's a difference between touching the equipment and leaving it drenched with sweat.  Back at The Gym, one man took his fear of gym germs a bit too far.  Every time he walked in, he headed straight for the sanitizer bottle, picked up a towel, and sprayed it with cleaner until it was dripping wet, then wrung it out on the floor.  For the rest of his workout, he wouldn't touch a single dumbbell or piece of equipment without first scrubbing it down with his soaked towel.

Oddly, a guy with a polar opposite philosophy often worked out at the same time.  Normal people usually don't sweat too much during a non-aerobic, weight lifting workout, but this man, who bore an uncanny resemblance to Bill Clinton, constantly looked like he had just climbed out of a swimming pool, and not once did he ever wipe down a piece of equipment.  Using anything after Mr. Clinton was downright frightening--beads of his sweat were still streaking down the bench long after his workout ended.

Here's my general rule: if I only touch something, I don't wipe it off.  If I sweat all over it, I wipe it off.  I don't get too hung up on cleanliness at the gym.  I wash my hands at the end of the workout, and I make it a habit not to go around licking the equipment.  So far, that strategy has worked pretty well for me.

#6: The Freeloaders
Television is a great way to help pass the minutes during a grueling cardio workout, but TV can also destroy a well-intentioned lifting routine.  Clearly, some members believe that as long as they're at the gym, it counts as a workout...no matter what they're actually doing. I thoroughly enjoy watching gym-goers sit idle on a bench for ten-minute stretches, eyes glued to the TV screen a few feet away. (Even better when they're sitting in a gym, watching The Biggest Loser...a brilliant strategy to one day end up as a contestant on the show.)  This phenomenon has gotten so bad that I'm convinced that some members' sole purpose in joining the gym was to take advantage of the satellite TV subscription, not because of any interest in health or fitness.  Here's my philosophy: if you're able to follow the plot of the TV show you're watching at the gym, it doesn't count as a workout.

#7: The Screamers

Every gym has a least a few people who fall into this category--the painfully loud grunters and screamers. Back at The Gym, the frequent screaming made at least a little sense. There were always crazy power lifters who were lifting incredible weight, enough to justify the gut-wrenching shrieks. That, and at The Gym, it was always a safe bet to assume that someone may have been stabbed when you heard screaming.  But beyond the hard-core power lifting crowd, the grunting and screaming gets old very quickly.  One particular member was a poster child for this group.  A short, round, bald man who resembled Humpty Dumpty, this guy always screamed--and I mean always.  Doing warmup stretches?  He screamed. Toning his calves with some light weights?  More screaming from Humpty.

#8: The Droppers

If you've ever worked out at a YMCA, then you already know that the group known as "The Droppers" consists primarily of high school males who seem to enjoy drawing attention to themselves by dropping dumbbells from a height of several feet at the end of each set.  Ironically, Droppers aren't typically lifting very heavy weights, which makes it hard for me to understand why they want everyone to know that they just completed a set. Even when Droppers are standing within arm's length of the dumbbell rack, they choose to drop the weights. I just don't get it. I'm still waiting for the day when a Dropper breaks a few of his own toes with an errant drop--it would make for a delightfully appropriate, self-inflicted punishment for an extremely annoying habit.

#9: The Overly Comfortable

Unlike Droppers, members of the Overly Comfortable crowd skew much more heavily toward the upper end of the age spectrum.  This group gained fame not from its members behavior in the workout area, but in the locker room. After a post-workout shower, most people dry off and get dressed--the way it should be. But that's not the case for the Overly Comfortable.  After showering and toweling off, the Overly Comfortable are in no great hurry to track down their clothes.  I guess we should be happy that these people feel comfortable with their bodies, but from what I've witnessed (despite my best efforts), the Overly Comfortable are the least deserving of this overwhelming sense of confidence that they seem to possess when it comes to their body image.

I suppose when you reach age 65 you just assume that you've earned the right to take your sweet time in putting your clothes back on, but I can't say that I appreciate the group of senior citizens that has turned locker rooms across the country into a nauseating network of nudist resorts.  If you're a complete stranger and want to strike up an awkward locker room conversation with me, please, please have the courtesy to wait until you're at least partially clothed...

Apparently I'm not the only one who has experienced this uncomfortable situation...what a fantastic illustration!

#10: The Inflated Egos

The Inflated Egos are a unique class of gym members, easily identified by their illusions of tough-guy grandeur and their mysterious allergy to sleeved shirts.  You'll rarely make eye contact with any of the Inflated Egos, because they spend 95% of their time admiring themselves in the mirror.  But keep an eye out, because Egos are so engrossed in self-admiration that they've been known to walk right into other people while not-so-subtly sneaking another glimpse of their own reflection.

To make matters worse, the Egos occasionally pass the time between sets by flexing in front the mirror. If you're a professional body builder preparing for competition, then practicing your posing technique is an important part of the job.  But if you're a narcissistic, recreational weight lifter with an undeserving sense of pride, flexing in the mirror is just plain laughable.

It's also important to realize that the average IQ of the Inflated Ego crowd is extraordinarily low, and if you somehow manage to get pulled into a conversation with one of the Egos, your only shot at a semi-meaningful discussion rests on your ability an speak at length about one of the following three topics: weight lifting, bar fights, or strip clubs.  Outside of those core subjects, you might as well be trying to explain calculus to a hamster.

#11: The Freaks

Yeah, I know I said this would be a top ten list, but I need one final catch-all group to fully capture all of the other odd gym members who fall outside the ten other categories: The Freaks. This category covers all of those strange gym-goers who are so unique in their oddness that they fall into their own niche of weirdness. What exactly am I referring to?  I have two perfect examples, each supported by brief video clips.  First, there's dancing guy:



The clip isn't even ten seconds long, but let me assure you: every spare second that this guy isn't on a machine, he's dancing--not just a few seconds here and there, but for the entirety of his hour-plus workouts.  And believe it or not, he was relatively subdued when I captured this clip. When he really gets into it, he'll clap his hands and get his hips swinging like you wouldn't believe.

Next, we have skipping/prancing woman:



Let me start by saying that I apologize for the length and quality of this video clip, which warrants further explanation.  The local Lifetime Fitness has a 1/11th mile indoor track, where you can often find this 50-something woman on weekend mornings.  What is she doing?  I'm not exactly sure.  I can describe it only as some kind of combination skipping, dancing, toe-tapping, arm-swinging, Michael Flatley-esque run/walk. And on such a short track, you're subjected to this unusual routine every 45 seconds, which makes for an odd workout.  I'd hoped that I could capture a much better video of this strange ritual, but I decided to air on the side of subtlety.  This woman already attracts enough strange looks from Lifetime members when she's not being followed around the track by some creepy guy with an iPhone, video recording her prancing.

It appears that the glory days are over and The Gym is closed for good, but while the faces have changed, the daily entertainment and frustration that comes from being around strange and annoying gym members will live on forever. As I've come to learn, that's just a universal truth, as certain as death, taxes, and monthly dues.

A Malibu Milestone

July 4, 1776.  December 7, 1941.  September 11, 2001.  November 13, 2011.  Okay, so the history books may never recognize 11/13/11 as a milestone in American history. But that doesn't make the day's occurrences any less significant. For months, I had pictured exactly what the occasion might look like, but when the day finally arrived, it somehow slipped my mind.  And I missed it.  Not by much--only 21 miles--but I missed it:

But you can't really blame me.  When I left for Arizona on November 11, the Malibu was sitting at 99,992 miles as I flew out of Minneapolis.  I knew that when I returned on the 13th, the drive home from the airport would push me past the elusive 100,000 mile barrier, and I would be ready and waiting with my camera.  The instant those five consecutive zeroes appeared under my speedometer, I would capture the historic moment, even if it meant slamming on the breaks and coming to a dead stop in the middle of the interstate to ensure a high-quality photo.

During my time in Arizona, I feared that something--I didn't know what exactly, but something--would happen to the Malibu while I was out of town.  It just couldn't possibly happen...a Chevy Malibu reaching 100,000 miles?  It's like winning the lottery...or getting hit by lightning...or winning the lottery at the exact same time you get hit by lightning.

With the excitement of the trip and the painful transition from the 70s of Tucson to the shrinkage-inducing 20 degree temperatures of a Minneapolis winter, I failed to give the odometer the attention it so desperately deserved.  The plane landed, I picked up my luggage, found the Malibu (sadly, no one had stolen it), and managed to get the car started...on the first try, no less!  Me: 1, Theft System Light: 0.  I pointed the car toward home and was on my way.

When I pulled into the garage, I realized I'd missed it.  I looked down, and my odometer read 100,021. Tears filled my eyes as the significance of the moment began to overwhelm me.  Over the course of eight and a half years (and with a 25,000 mile head start courtesy of the previous owner) I had timidly gone where no Malibu owner had gone before.  It was the perfect ending to a year that, by Malibu standards, was pretty darn good.  (The Malibu celebrated the occasion by briefly shutting off the Check Engine light, which promptly returned in all of its blinding glory on November 15.)

It's been a full 13 months since I last wrote about the Malibu...twice, I guess, back in December, 2010.  That's a good sign, because when it comes to the Malibu, no news is good news.  With my opening blog of 2012, I figure now is as good a time as any to update the infamous repair expense thermometer:

As of the previous update, the repair thermometer sat at $6,494, which means that I spent another $924 on Malibu repairs in 2011.  That may not sound like a great year, but it beats the $2,600 I spent on repairs in 2007...or the $2,050 I spent the year after...and it's well below my five year annual average of $1,500.  But enough about the numbers.  Behind the $924 repair budget sits a fine, fine Malibu story.

The entire $924 was spent on a single repair...and a strange one, at that.  On Friday, April 22, I came home from work and pulled the car into the garage.  Family came to visit that weekend, and I didn't drive the car again until I started backing out to go to work on Monday morning.  The moment I started backing up, I heard a loud grinding sound. Believe me, I've been through enough Malibu repairs to know an expensive sound when I hear one, and this didn't sound good at all. My first guess was that something was lodged under the car.  I got out and looked around, but couldn't find anything unusual.  I got back in the car and slowly started backing up again, only to hear more grinding.  Whatever this was, it didn't seem to be going away.

I slowly navigated the car out of the garage and into the parking lot, loud grinding accompanying me for the duration of my short, pathetic journey.  I felt certain that a tow truck was in my not-too-distant future.  I got out and walked around the car again, and in the bright morning sunlight, I spotted the problem: the front driver's side wheel well was resting comfortably against the tire.  I had no problem identifying the issue, since I had just replaced the rear struts on the Malibu--at great expense--the previous October.

I went upstairs and called a tow truck, then called work to tell them I wouldn't be making it in to the office that day. On the bright side, I'm happy to report that that particular phone call has become supremely efficient over the years:

Me: "I'm going to have to work from home today."
Work: "Malibu?"
Me: "Yeah."

As I waited for the tow truck, I realized that the Malibu had hit rock bottom in it's track record of mediocre quality.  It's one thing when your car breaks down while driving. But the Malibu found a way to break down while sitting in a climate-controlled garage!  To put that in human terms, the Malibu's parked strut-failure is the automobile equivalent of seriously injuring myself during an afternoon nap.  Hardly the injury of a courageous warrior...

But like I said before, 2011 ended up being a pretty solid year.  I got to ride in a tow truck and walk home from the repair shop, and I guess I should consider myself lucky that the struts didn't break while I was driving...after all, I'd hate to roll another car off the interstate.  And after installing my second pair of new struts in six months, I cruised through the remainder of 2011 without another repair bill.  Things could certainly be worse...

With 100,000 miles and nearly $7,500 in my rear-view mirror, I'm slowly rebuilding the Malibu, piece by expensive piece.  New struts, new driver's side window controls, two new tires, an overactive Theft System...I have no reason to feel anything but confident--I'm practically driving a brand new car!  My sights are now firmly set on 200,000 miles.

I now close with the same offer that I extended at the end of 2010: help me fund the next leg of my journey, and ride shotgun as the Malibu extends it's already impressive mileage record.  I promise you this: the next time five consecutive zeroes show up on my odometer, I won't forget to snap that picture.  So click that button...

The Great Gift of Nothing

With my final blog post of 2011, I decided it's time to share my gift-giving philosophies with the world.  To be more precise, I should clarify that what's about to follow are actually my thoughts and feelings about why gift-giving is overrated and entirely unnecessary.  Gifts detract from the true meaning of Christmas, birthdays, weddings, and other holidays, and no one knows better what I want and need than myself.

Feeling like people may not embrace or even understand my philosophy without a little elaboration, I did some research and came across some alarming statistics: 40% of all gifts are a disappointment to the recipient, and the average person spends $35,000 over his lifetime on gifts that the recipient didn't want.  Whether it's the wrong size, the wrong color, or just a plain bad idea, recipients are often left with gifts that they're too embarrassed to return, fearing that they will offend the giver.  Worst of all, they feel obligated to reciprocate the "favor" by giving a gift of their own, and so begins a vicious cycle of unnecessary generosity.

I realize that my views on giving will likely shock to those of you who read last year's holiday blog post--you may recall that around this time last year, I was dreaming of a green Christmas as I furiously wrapped a tree-load of gifts with a variety of old newspapers and magazines.  Christmas 2011 was no exception--I once again put a healthy stack of outdated newspapers to good use as I prepared for the holidays.  But if you jumped to the conclusion that I go through an elaborate process of requesting wish lists from friends and loved ones and carefully shopping for the perfect gifts, then you are painfully mistaken.

You see, what those layers of ancient newspapers conceal are primarily re-gifted items that I received from other people and passed along to the next unsuspecting recipient, along with free food samples from work, many of which are months (or even years) past their expiration date. This year, I even gifted a library book that I checked out a few weeks ago and need to return to the library shortly after Christmas. Despite my beautiful pile of gifts each year, I've decided to reveal the truth as 2011 draws to a close.  You're probably familiar with the phrase "it's better to give than to receive."  When it comes to traditional gift-giving, I'm a firm believer in a slightly different phrase: "it's better to neither give nor receive."

Oddly enough, I haven't always thought this way. As a child, receiving gifts each Christmas was a memorable and spectacular event, because so many of the things I wanted were out of reach with my weekly allowance.  Yet by tenth grade, my focus had shifted away from material possessions to the true meaning of the holidays: a coma-inducing two-week food binge, along with the mental purging of everything I had learned over the past semester in school.  It was around that time that I really started to struggle to come up with a wish list for Christmas.

Once adulthood hit, exchanging gifts had become all but irrelevant.  The one bright spot that came with soul-crushing, full time work was the bi-weekly paycheck. These days, if I want something, I buy it.  And, as anyone who has visited my apartment knows, there simply aren't very many somethings that I want. Sure, I ask for a 370Z each Christmas, but my hopes of actually receiving a new car are about as realistic as my hopes of permanently abolishing winter weather in Minnesota, which I also put on my Christmas list each year.

When it comes to receiving gifts, the best present anyone can give me is nothing at all--370Zs aside, I have everything I need, and anything else is just unnecessary clutter.  If family members insist on getting me something for by birthday, I ask that the gift is practical, that it's something that I will definitely use, and that it is edible or otherwise consumable.  That's why, for my most recent birthday, I received the following gifts: Chap Stick, toilet paper, dental floss, and a box of Kleenex. Best birthday ever!

I credit this philosophy as the reason for a compliment that a friend recently bestowed upon my apartment: "It looks like an Apple Store in here!"  The spectacularly overwhelming, bare-walled nothingness, which has been known to cause waves of dizziness and nausea among first-time visitors, is a testament to my philosophy: when it comes to gift-giving, nothing is everything. (Oddly enough, I have the same philosophy when it comes to John Denver music.)

Though my views on gift-giving developed around Christmastime, they quickly expanded as my friends started to get married. When the first of my friends got married five years ago, I caved to society's pressure and bought a wedding gift...but not without feeling sickened that I had betrayed my sacred beliefs.  Here I was, giving a gift to a pair of grown adults, both of whom worked full-time jobs and were hardly lacking in any way.

The more I thought about it, the concept of the wedding gift registry seemed almost laughable--it strikes me as more of a hostage situation than a way of congratulating friends on marriage.  Not only does society dictate that you will purchase a wedding gift (regardless of whether you actually attend the wedding!), but the bride- and groom-to-be provide the invitees with a list of demands.

A few years later, I received a wedding invitation from another friend. But this time I stayed true to my beliefs, and I showed up at the wedding with the exact same gift that I expect from my closest friends: absolutely nothing.  Months later, when another friend mentioned that he'd noticed my lack of gift at the wedding, I realized that I had erred--not in failing to bring a gift to the wedding, but in failing to provide an adequate explanation for my lack of gift.  I hadn't intended to be rude, and I was in no way trying to send a negative message; I had just decided to take a stand and stay true to my beliefs.  That's where this blog post will come in handy--the next time I'm invited to a wedding, I'll hand a printed copy of this post directly to the bride and groom.

You see, many people misinterpret my distaste for gift-giving as outright cheapness on my part, but that couldn't be further from the truth.  My philosophies are nothing more than a grand application of the Golden Rule: treat others as you would like others to treat you. I can only assume the same principle holds true when it comes to gifting: if you want nothing, give nothing.  In my experience, if you give gifts, the recipients feel like they need to get you something in return, regardless of how many times you say that you want nothing at all.  I decided it was time to put my revolutionary idea into practice and finally break this vicious, unnecessary gift-giving cycle...and actions certainly speak louder than words.

Emboldened by moral triumph at the wedding, I thought I'd conquered all my gift-related concerns.  But later that year, my gifting philosophies clashed with a holiday volunteer event at work. Leading up to Christmases 2009 and 2010, my entire division participated in The Salvation Army's Adopt-A-Family program, in which we sponsored several low-income families.  We received Christmas wish lists for the members of these families, divided into teams, and spent the day shopping and wrapping gifts.

Though I welcome any excuse to escape an ordinary day at the office, pretending to get work done, I take issue with several aspects of Adopt-A-Family, as it combines three of my most dreaded pastimes: shopping (in this case, mostly for children), spending time with middle-aged co-workers, and using traditional wrapping paper. (Yes, I tossed the newspaper/magazine wrapping idea out there, but it was promptly shot down.)

Worst of all, I felt as though we were doing these children a great disservice.  Should we really teach poor kids that the holidays are all about material possessions?  If we fill the underside of the Christmas tree with toys this year, what happens if no one sponsors the family next year? Planting the evil seed of consumerism seems like a spectacularly bad idea.


The way I see it, poor children are uniquely positioned to appreciate the true meaning of the holidays and to enjoy the few things that they do possess--the drafty, run-down apartment that they get to call home; the mangy, rabid family pet; and the grimy sock puppet that mom nabbed from the janitor's closet last Christmas.

And so for two straight years, for the sake of my continued employment, I kept my mouth shut as I shopped and wrapped gifts with my co-workers, once again betraying my gift-giving beliefs.  As another Christmas approaches, however, I realize what I should have done. Both of those years, I turned down a golden opportunity when I declined to be the volunteer driver who would deliver all of the wrapped gifts to the Salvation Army headquarters in my fine, fine Chevy Malibu.  Looking back, I should have jumped at the chance to deliver those presents...

Along the way, I would have dropped off the gifts at some sort of charity for the supremely wealthy, where all of those unnecessary presents would go to families who are already spoiled by America's overly materialistic view of the holidays. When I pulled up at the Salvation Army, I would bring with me a one small, newspaper-wrapped gift for each family on the Adopt-A-Family list.  That's precisely where, once again, this blog post would serve me well--inside each package, I would provide a copy of this post, explaining why they received absolutely nothing for Christmas and should feel grateful for it.

I realize that in the first year, this blog post might deliver a bit of a harsh message for low-income families, so I would consider throwing a little something in to help soften the blow of receiving nothing...perhaps a small bag of airline peanuts stapled to the blog post would do the trick. When the next Christmas rolled around, I would leave the children nothing but a single note, reminding them that if they were feeling disappointed, they should also feel guilty and ashamed of themselves for not appreciating the true meaning of the holidays.

My ultimate goal is to change society's views of gift-giving, one Christmas, one birthday, and one wedding at a time.  Friends and family members repeatedly tell me that one person can't overhaul a whole system of traditions, but I respond by saying that the world needs innovative thinkers to make radical changes.  If it weren't for visionaries like Rosa Parks, Steve Jobs, and me, we'd be riding around on segregated buses full of people listening to portable 8-track players and buying all kinds of unnecessary crap for one another.  But in the end, maybe I'm not as opposed to gift-giving as I first thought...when it comes down to it, shame and guilt are still gifts, right?

A Closing Footnote: The Great Cash Debacle

I couldn't hit the "Publish" button on a blog post about gift-giving without mentioning society's conflicting views of cash and gift cards as gift options. For the life of me, I can't comprehend why cash is considered a thoughtless and tacky gift, while gift cards continue to surge in popularity.

Cash avoids may of the common pitfalls of normal gifts--it doesn't take up space, it can be spent anywhere, saved, or invested, and it never expires.  Maybe the uppity folks of high society have tainted cash as a gift because they find it just too obvious and simple?  Personally, I admire a gifter who recognizes the truth of the situation and proudly announces with a cash-stuffed envelope: "You know yourself better than I could ever know you, so pick out your own gift!"

In my extensive research, I uncovered some staggering information about the gift card industry, which was created by Blockbuster Video in the mid-90s.  (You'd think that with such innovative thinking, they would have seen Netflix coming...)  As of last year, gift cards were on the fast track to becoming a $100 billion industry, and over the next four years, experts predict that online gift card purchases will grow at nearly 30% a year.  Clearly, gift cards are a perfectly acceptable--and very popular--gift option.

The way I see it, gift cards offer essentially the same level of thoughtlessness as a pile of money, with one significant distinction--the gift giver dictates where you have to spend the money.  Gift cards are essentially cash without freedom...which seems downright un-American, doesn't it?  To make matters worse, lots of retailers deduct a fee from the unused balance of a card if it isn't used after a certain amount of time. Better than cash? A more thoughtful gift?  I don't see it.

The Trials and Tribulations of a Terrible Travel Blog

When it comes to travel, 2011 started slowly enough for me, but as of mid-September, my schedule called for five trips in a span of of seven weeks. Yeah, I know, five trips hardly qualifies me as a road-warrior. In fact, now that it's all behind me, I still have yet to achieve anything higher than aluminum or tin status with any of the major airlines or hotels. My travel itinerary looked something like this:


1) September 26-29: Napa, California, for a work conference
2) October 5-6: Vineland, New Jersey, (with a flight into Philadelphia) to visit a manufacturing plant for work
3) October 19-21: Irapuato, Mexico, to visit another manufacturing plant for work
4) October 26-28: Chicago, Illinois, for another work conference and a tour of yet another manufacturing plant
5) November 11-13: Tucson, Arizona, to play in a USTA tennis tournament


With all the hours I would be spending in airports, in hotels, and on airplanes, a brilliant idea started to take shape in my mind: I would create a travel blog! Unlike Passionately Apathetic's "A little bit of everything and a whole lot of nothing" approach, the new travel blog would have a specific purpose. I would write about the adventures of my travels all over North America, featuring all of the standard travel blog material: hotel and food reviews, pictures of local attractions, and so on. But as my travels unfolded, I noticed two potential hiccups in my plan: aside from the fact that I'm both boring and lazy, nothing particularly noteworthy was happening on these trips.


The travel schedule kicked off with my first trip to Napa, California. The scenery was great and the weather was spectacular, but work meetings chewed up a sizable chunk of my week. As the days passed, I realized that I had almost nothing to write about Napa, California that anyone would want to read. People scouring travel blogs about Napa are undoubtedly seeking recommendations on wine tasting, local shopping, and vineyard tours. All I had to offer was the ramblings of a guy who doesn't drink, hates shopping, and is about as interested in going on a vineyard tour as he is in spending time with children. Even my attempt to see the Golden Gate Bridge when I flew into San Francisco was a spectacular disappointment. Oh well, I had four more trips on the schedule, and they would surely offer something worth writing.

On an otherwise clear day in San Francisco, views from the Golden Gate Bridge were disappointing...

Next, I flew into Philadelphia in early October for my second trip, a visit to a soup plant in Vineland, New Jersey. But things were looking even more grim than they were in Napa. It was only an overnight trip, which left me with no free time to do anything interesting. The highlight of the trip was dinner with two co-workers in Philadelphia on the night that I arrived. As we ate at a table outside the restaurant, a homeless guy walked by, offered to shine our shoes, then started singing. When that failed to generate a reaction, he attempted one final sales pitch to a female co-worker who was wearing sandals: "Come on, let a black man touch your feet!"

My blogging standards are low, but I do have standards. And what else was there to write about? New Jersey was a wasteland of excitement and creativity. Could I do five-hundred words on the various odors wafting from the armpit of America? Probably...but, again, standards...

Mexico held plenty of promise. I fully expected that I would get robbed or mugged at some point during the trip. I wasn't looking forward to it, but it would certainly make for an exciting story. My greatest fear was that my passport would end up lost or stolen, leaving me trapped in Mexico, wandering aimlessly around the country, mumbling Spanglish and trying to rent a burro to ride safely back across the border. As a result, I kept a close watch on the one bag I brought with me. In fact, I never let that bag out of my sight....so when I left my hotel room, the only sign that the room was occupied was the pair of flip-flips that I assumed wouldn't be worth stealing even if someone broke into the room. Oops.

When I returned to my hotel room the first night, the flip-flops were gone. An exciting break-in?! Sadly, no. The room was so clean and empty when I left that morning, the hotel maid apparently thought that the occupant had checked out and forgotten the flip-flops. Though frustrating, this mistake sparked an interesting thought: if all of the hotel maids in America are Mexican, are the hotel maids working in Mexican hotels from America?

To make the accidental theft even less scandalous, the hotel Fed-Ex'ed the flip-flops back to me after I submitted a strongly-worded complaint on the Holiday Inn corporate website. The most entertaining part of the whole incident was seeing the excruciating amount of paperwork that the hotel manager had to fill out to comply with U.S. shoe import regulations.

The only other noteworthy event on the great Mexico adventure occured in the León International Airport, when a co-worker noticed that my favorite pair of jeans (the only pants I brought with me on the trip), had numerous holes in the crotch area. Although that particular subject falls directly in the bulls-eye of prime blogging topics for Passionately Apathetic, it hardly offers top-notch travel blog material...plus I had already written extensively on the topic. Clearly, the travel blog was shaping up to be an epic failure.

My final work trip of the year, Chicago, was fun enough, but consisted mostly of work meetings. My one last hope for a true travel blog entry--a local food review--managed to escape me when all three days passed without eating a single bite of authentic Chicago deep dish pizza. Before our flight home, two co-workers and I made a last-ditch effort to nab some deep dish at O'Hare, but we were painfully disappointed by Uno's not-so-deep dish miniature pizzas.


The four work trips came and went, and I didn't have a single story worthy of a travel blog. My potential material consisted of a homeless guy with a foot fetish, a pair of temporarily lost flip-flops, some jeans that looked like Swiss cheese between the legs, and an airport's sorry excuse for deep dish pizza. Worse yet, I couldn't even default to complaining about the airlines or hotels. Unfortunately, I'd had an incredibly lucky five weeks of travel: not a single one of my flights had arrived late, there were no missed connections, no lost bags, no over-talkative airplane neighbors, and no signs of bedbugs at any of the hotels (not even in Mexico!).


As I boarded the plane for my final trip to Tucson, I had officially abandoned the travel blog idea and only hoped that my lucky travel streak would remain intact for one more trip. And things were looking up from the start. I was assigned to seat 6B...sure, it was a middle seat, but it was near the front of the plane and would set me up for a quick exit after we landed.


The pilot announced that the flight was full, yet 6A, the window seat to my left, was still empty and there didn't seem to be anyone else walking onto the plane. That is, until one last person lumbered into the aisle...and this wasn't just anyone. The sheer circumference of this man was utterly astounding...if I didn't know better, I'd think that he was in his fourth trimester of pregnancy. I was convinced that his pants could cover the entire state of Rhode Island like a giant circus tent. And there was no doubt in my mind exactly where this man was headed: 6A.

As I watched this guy wedge himself into his seat (and a sizable portion of my seat), it struck me that he could really use some kind of oversize shoehorn to help him cram his 350+ lb frame into such a comparatively tiny space. But I didn't have time to draft any formal blueprints for such a contraption--I now faced the unenviable task of cramming myself into 6B. The other passengers on the plane must have felt like they were watching a group of clowns pile into one of those tiny little cars...


"Ma'am? Ma'am!!" Seconds after sitting down, my newest friend was already flagging down the flight attendant. What could he possibly want right after boarding?! A snack? Apparently not quite yet. "I'm going to need a seat belt extender!" It just kept getting better.

A minute later, the guy had a length of seatbelt sufficient to keep him FAA-compliant for the flight and long enough to turn any normal person into a seatbelt mummy if the need arose. As he struggled to strap himself in, the jokes began. "I swear, these seatbelts get smaller every time I fly...it couldn't be me!"

There are three types of airline passengers whom I utterly despise: children, the overly talkative, and the overweight. This guy already had one of those categories more then covered; I wasn't about to do anything that might encourage further conversation. I stared straight ahead and pretended that I hadn't heard a word. Normally, I might have appreciated his attempt at humor, but I knew what was ahead of me over the next three hours.

I considered lowering the arm rest in attempt to protect at least a portion of the left side of my seat, but that plan had serious safety implications. If, by some miracle, I was able to force the arm rest down, I knew it would only be a matter of minutes before it snapped off and shot through the side of the airplane like a missile, likely killing someone and bringing down the plane in the process. When it came to flying projectiles, I had a similar concern for my eyes--the buttons on my neighbor's shirt appeared to be under serious duress, threatening to go airborne at very high speeds in very short order. With my frightening lack of protective eyewear, all I could do was look away and hope for the best...

As the flight got underway, I realized that things were only going to become more and more uncomfortable as the minutes passed. Every time I shifted in my seat, my amply-proportioned neighbor's fleshy drumstick encroached further and further into my personal space. The enemy line continued advancing into the left side of 6B with every move I made. Forty-five minutes into the flight, I looked like the leaning tower of Pisa, tilting sharply toward 6C and having fully retreated from the left half of 6B.

I felt like the weight of the world was resting on my shoulders...and for all pratical purposes, it was.  On my left shoulder, in particular. By this time, the fat man's right arm and shoulder were entirely overlapping my left side. I only prayed that the air vents continued spewing cold air, otherwise I was going to arrive in Tucson drenched in his sweat. By this time, had the pilot's voice come on the intercom and announced that the plane was going down, my feelings would have been mixed.

By mid-flight, I decided that I would move over no more. It was clear that neither one of us was going to be comfortable on this flight, but I decided I might as well shift as much of my discomfort to him as I possibly could. After all, it wasn't my fault that this guy spent most of his life downing Ho-Hos and avoiding exercise. As he slept, I sat up straighter and straighter and slowly leaned more aggressively into his meaty side until I was seated upright. I couldn't feel my left leg anymore, but I was determined to reclaim as much of 6B as humanly possible.

Not long after, the snack cart approached and, not surprisingly, my neighbor awoke from his deep slumber, somehow sensing that food was approaching. He then said something to me, and the words that left his mouth were absolutely shocking. The only conversation I was willing to entertain involved him offering to reimburse me for half my airfare, since he was using just as much of 6B as I was. But instead he asked, "Could you move over a little?" What?!  Was he serious?! I was absolutely livid, but I controlled myself and angrily mumbled, "I'll try..." I squirmed around in my seat a little but didn't actually give up any ground. Soon enough, my neighbor had his Diet Coke, to which I could only think, "far too little, far too late..."

He quickly fell back to sleep, and I made a fatal mistake with one hour of flight time remaining. If nothing else, this uncomfortable ordeal presented me with a great photo opportunity. Snapping a picture while this guy slept could almost make the whole thing worthwhile. I leaned forward and started fumbling around in my bag in search of my camera. But I quickly realized what I'd done. By leaning forward, I was no longer pinned under my pear-shaped nemesis, but I knew that my left side wouldn't touch the back of my seat for the remainder of the flight. The blob-like mass to my left had immediately expanded into the spot I had just vacated.

Disheartened, I gave up on the camera and leaned back. Sure enough, I experienced a whole new form of discomfort, now sitting with my torso twisted sharply to the right until the plane finally landed in Tucson. That meant, unfortunately, that I was unable to procure a first-hand picture of my rotund rival. For those curious to know what a 350 pound wildebeest looks like when stuffed in a window seat, I can at least paint a mental picture for you: imagine what it would look like if someone parked the Goodyear blimp in a one-stall garage...or if someone inflated a Thanksgiving day float inside a Smartcar.

Once again, stock photos from the internet will have to suffice...

After freeing myself from the death grip of 6B, my imagination ran wild as I stood at the baggage claim, the feeling slowly returning to my extremities. I quickly devised a brilliant strategy to help the struggling industry boost revenues: forget the checked bag fees; airplanes need limo-style dividers between seats. At the precise moment that my gastrointestinally-challenged neighbor asked me to move over, I would have paid just about anything for the option to press a button and watch a solid, sound-proof divider slide up between our seats, restricting every last ounce of his flabby figure to the seat that he paid for. That would teach him to buy only one ticket for a flight...and who knows, the divider might even provide him with a little extra motivation to hit the treadmill before his next trip.

And so five trips came and went, and my travel blog aspirations disappeared like a snack on the tray table of my neighbor. But I didn't return home completely empty-handed: thanks to a whale of a man and an unfortunate seat assignment, I had some prime writing material for Passionately Apathetic. And along the way, I realized that writing this blog has helped me generate all kinds of fantastic ideas for new inventions: oversize bodyhorns for the morbidly obese, peephole covers, gift-concealing Christmas curtains, airline seat dividers...the list goes on and on. It's like I'm Thomas Edison, without the motivation or the knowhow to actually build anything.

The Problematic Peephole

Back in college, on an otherwise unremarkable Tuesday afternoon, my intense studying was interrupted by a knock at the door. My first reaction was to ignore it, since anyone who knew me would call before stopping by. I knew it had to be some salesman who was too ignorant to understand the big, complicated words on the "No Solicitation" sign prominently hanging on the building entrance. The knocking persisted, so I eventually made my way to the door and peered through the peephole at my unwanted visitor, still determined that I wouldn't give him the satisfaction of delivering his sales pitch face-to-face.


When I looked through the peephole, the salesman had the nerve to angrily declare, "I can tell you're standing right on the other side of the door!" As I looked through my peephole, my head had apparently blocked out the light that shone through the peephole before I stood in front of it. But still, determined as ever, I stood quietly, ready to wait him out as long as it took. After a few more minutes of mumbling and swearing from his side of the door, and more motionless peephole leering from my side, the salesman gave up and moved along to the apartment across the hall. Victory was mine.

I was pleased with my success, and I even made an upgrade to my peephole after that unexpected encounter. For the remainder of my stay in that apartment, I kept a small scrap of paper scotch-taped over the peephole on the inside of the door. This prevented light from shining through, allowing me to get in prime peeking position without letting any potential visitors realize that I was looking right at them and standing only a few feet away. I felt like the Invisible Man...a genius Invisible Man, for that matter. Sadly, during the next eighteen months I lived in that apartment, not a single person ever came to the door. But I took great pride in my scrap of paper and scotch tape--perhaps an early sign of my burgeoning MacGyver skills.

But what does this odd story have to do with anything? Absolutely nothing...that is, until earlier this afternoon, nearly five years after my encounter with that salesman. This time, on a Saturday afternoon, I was wolfing down lunch and getting ready to head out the door to play tennis with a friend. As I ate, I was listening to some music on the computer...a little loud, perhaps, but it wasn't too unreasonable. Plus it was the middle of the afternoon, so I wasn't waking anyone up in the middle of the night.

Then, out of nowhere, I heard a knock at the door. Unlike my old college apartment, the outside doors on this building actually lock, so anyone coming to visit would have to ring my phone and ask me to let them in. Five years living in this building have taught me that an unexpected knock at the door can only mean that someone walked in through an unlocked door and embarked on a door-to-door journey of annoyance. And that someone was almost certainly a salesman, an annoying political campaigner, or a Jehovah's Witness.

That last scenario scared me the most. Years ago, my uncle devised a foolproof method that will immediately turn away a telemarketer or even the most persistent door-to-door salesman--just tell them you're a Jehovah's Witness. The result is an immediate apology from the ignorant salesperson, who thinks he has somehow insulted your religious beliefs with his sales pitch. It's a flawless plan...except when your visitors are themselves Jehovah's Witnesses.


So, once again, I planned to ignore the knocking. I immediately shut off the music, but I knew that my visitor had already heard it--despite the weight of my front door, it's about as soundproof as a cheap curtain. I didn't have my ingenious paper and scotch tape contraption in place, so I wisely decided to forgo any peephole leering. I went into wait-it-out mode. Another knock. Could this be about the music? Was it too loud? A few minutes passed, and I decided my visitor had given up.

Wrong. Another knock, accompanied by, "can you turn your music down!?" By now, the music had been off for a few minutes. Why was this guy still at my door? I was getting annoyed...the music hadn't even been playing for five minutes, it was the middle of the day, and it just wasn't that loud to begin with. My curiosity got the best of me; I had to know who was out there.


I walked over to the peephole and peeped. I immediately recognized an old guy who I'd occasionally seen in the halls around the building over the years. Is this really how he was going to play it, like a mature adult, coming to my door to ask me to turn down my music? I wouldn't have it. This was worse than the salesman, and I was even more committed to my wait-it-out strategy. He already got what he wanted...my music was off, and I was fully prepared to spend all day standing there in silence.

But the problem was that I couldn't stand there all day. I needed to leave for my tennis match in the next five minutes if I was going to make it on time. Yet another knock--it was clear he wasn't going away. I could feel the pounding vibrate through my head as I continued to press my face against the door and look through the peephole. Worse yet, I heard him say to someone else in the hall who was apparently out of my line of sight, "he's looking at me through the peephole right now." Curses! I had fallen victim to the peephole shadow blunder once again. Why hadn't I installed my scrap paper and scotch tape contraption the day I moved in?!

A few thoughts raced through my mind...what if I jumped off my second-story balcony with my tennis racquets and drove off, leaving him standing at my front door? I relished the thought of returning to my apartment a few hours later, the old man still standing in front of my door, knuckles bloodied from the incessant knocking. I could picture the look on his face when I walked up and asked if I could help him, acting as if I'd been gone all day. Surely he would have to question his own sanity, wondering how he could have possibly spent his afternoon harassing an empty apartment.


Despite the potentially epic story-telling value of this plan, I scrapped my balcony escape idea. With my track record for injuries over the past few years, it wasn't worth risking my body--or my tennis racquets--to make a daring patio exit. I was going to have to confront the old man. But how could I do this gracefully? He knew I was standing right there and that I'd just spent the better part of the past ten minutes ignoring his knocking. Opening the door now would be painfully awkward and embarrassing, and I certainly wasn't going to grant him the adult, face-to-face confrontation that he seemed to have his heart set on.

Worse yet, opening the door would reveal my identity, and I had no doubt that the old man would recognize me from the hall. At least by cowering behind my door I could prevent him from associating me with this apartment, which would save me from countless future awkward hallway encounters. I started flipping through my mental Rolodex of lies and excuses...jackpot! I would tell him I just got out of the shower!

"Who is it?" I asked through the closed door, as if I'd just realized someone was was knocking.
"Johnny, your neighbor above you. Can you turn the music down?!"
At this point I desperately needed to leave for tennis, so I had to shut him up quickly. "Yes, sorry about that, I was in the shower." Just like that, Johnny walked off, and I was free.

As I drove to tennis, it hit me: I had just confronted my arch enemy through my own front door! You see, until today, I never knew who lived above me. But Johnny's third-floor patio is no more than ten feet from my second-floor bedroom window. And, as it turned out, this past summer I spent one of the most frustrating Saturday afternoons of my life trying to study for the GMAT while Johnny's young grandchildren sat with him on that very patio, screaming and yelling. How could I possibly find the product of the first, third, and fifth prime factors of 11,482 while Johnny's grandchildren were shrieking six feet from my desk?

Johnny's patio, as seen from my bedroom window.

On that dreadful afternoon, I calmly tolerated that racket for much, much longer than the four minutes that Johnny put up with my "loud" music earlier today. And when I finally lost my patience that day, I had the decency to not venture up to the third floor and knock on Johnny's door. I did the mature thing and found the most profanity-laced song on my computer, cranked the speakers full-blast, opened my patio door, and gave those grandchildren a top-notch profanity lesson from the school of hard rock. Not only did this feel great, but my plan also worked perfectly. Within minutes, the children were inside, restoring peace to my soul-crushing study session.

And Johnny had the nerve to come downstairs and knock on my door today?! If anything, I should be the one standing on his doorstep, blaming him and his annoying grandchildren for my only slightly-better-than-mediocre GMAT score. But before I got too swept up in road rage as I drove to tennis, a smile spread across my face when I realized that Johnny's journey to the second floor today had given me something special: my next blog post.

My thoughts quickly wandered to a new subject of blame: the peephole. I had now twice fallen victim to what I consider a major design flaw in the standard peephole. Call me old fashioned, but I'm a firm believer that the peephole should not reveal to a visitor whether or not the resident is currently home. The whole reason for the peephole is to let the homeowner decide if he wants to open the door...and that decision is a lot less complicated if the person on the other side doesn't know that he's standing right there. With my past peephole misfortunes, I feel like I might as well have a reverse peephole installed on my door.

I continued to dwell on this problem when I returned home. I even searched the internet for a solution, but my efforts were fruitless. I stumbled across an intriguing video-style "peephole" that would eliminate all of the peephole shadow issues that had plagued me over the past five years, but the gadget cost $80. And I'm convinced that there's no problem in the world large enough to warrant spending $80 on a solution.


Obviously, for a more cost-effective fix I could quickly install one of my famous scotch tape and scrap paper contraptions, but that would violate my self-imposed ban on interior decorations of any kind--I take great pride in hanging absolutely nothing on my walls or doors (quite possibly a topic for a future blog post). My internet search uncovered some clever ideas for decorating my peephole, but that wouldn't solve the shadow problem and would still violate my minimalist interior design strategy.


To date, after nearly a year and a half of blogging, I've generated $2.35 in ad revenue, and Google requires a $100 minimum to cash out. Clearly, this blog has been a tremendous letdown in terms of funding my early retirement. And so, if this is my final blog post of 2011, know that have I temporarily shifted my focus from blogging to inventing the next great peephole cover.

Perhaps the solution is as simple as a small metal plate that sits inside the door, avoiding unnecessary external decoration while covering the peephole until my eye is firmly in place, with my head casting a shadow over the peephole as I prepare to spy on my visitor. Then, with the flip of a switch, I raise the metal plate, and my guest is completely clueless as to whether I'm standing two feet away or half way around the world. Awkward situation averted...and, with some clever marketing, early retirement successfully funded. Time to call work and tell them I won't be in Monday.

The Fluctuating Friend Phenomenon and Other Fantastic Facebook Failures

Facebook made news recently after yet another round of modifications to users’ profile pages. Along with this latest round of changes came the predictable outcries over privacy concerns--Facebook can’t even discuss the possibility of changing its logo without a massive user backlash and a frenzy of privacy complaints.

For the record, however, I viewed these privacy concerns as unwarranted from day one. Anyone with a pulse and the slightest concern for their online image can restrict access to a list of specific friends. Personally, I always enjoy watching a double-dip of stupidity. Isn't it fantastic that the same people who are stupid enough to engage in embarrassing behavior in front of a camera are equally ignorant when it comes to Facebook privacy settings?

Admittedly, I made a late arrival to the whole Facebook scene. The “old-timers” of the new online era will recall that Facebook began as a college-only website. Strangely enough, I didn’t join Facebook until the spring of 2006, the exact same day that I completed my last final exam in college. Shortly thereafter, Facebook added a new feature that set off one of the biggest user complaint sessions in the brief history of Facebook: the newsfeed, the page that now displays when you first log in to your account, listing all of the latest status updates, photo uploads, and other friends' activities.

While countless anti-newsfeed groups popped up and gained popularity all over Facebook, I was one of only three people to join an Iowa State University-specific, pro-newsfeed group called P.E.N.I.S. (People Enjoying Newsfeeds at Iowa State). To this day, I still can’t figure out why the group never achieved widespread popularity across the internet. I’ve always found Facebook’s privacy options more than adequate and easy to use, but surely there were more than two people on a campus of 20,000+ who shared my opinions on the subject.

Yet despite my support and general level of contentment with Facebook’s privacy settings, I have an entirely different set of complaints about Facebook’s functionality. For a company that's valued in the billions of dollars, that has turned a huge Harvard nerd into one of the richest people in the country, and has revolutionized both social media and the traditional marketing business, the company has what I consider many obvious shortcomings.


First, there’s the design of the friend list. Despite all of the changes to the design and layout of Facebook’s profile pages, one thing that has remained nearly constant since the early days is the familiar “plus one” logo that appears along with the phrase “You and (whoever) are now friends” when you make a new friend connection on Facebook:


Ahh, the “plus one” update. Easy to understand? Yes. Familiar? Yes. Useful information? Not at all. As a Facebook user, a message telling me that I’m now friends with someone is about as useful as being updated on the current weather conditions in my area while I'm standing outdoors. After all, I either sent the friend request to begin with, or I just clicked the “Accept” button, which prompted the +1 to show up. I’d be more interested in receiving a piece of information that Facebook doesn’t currently offer—a “minus one” update.

This idea first came to me one day while I admired my friend count after a story on the ten o’clock news. The reporter claimed that there is an optimal number of Facebook friends, a “sweet spot” of social network friendliness, if you will. That magic number was 300 friends. Anything less than that meant that you are a lonely, pathetic loser, and anything above 300 meant that you’re a fake, desperate wannabe who will friend anything with a pulse.

Of course, since social status means the world to me, I immediately logged in to my Facebook account to check my friend count. My homepage confirmed what I had suspected all along: I was essentially perfect: 299 friends. Out of curiosity, I checked James’s friend counter: nearly 1,200. Ouch...I guess we know what that means… That little experiment was proof enough for me that this news reporter knew what he was talking about.

Over the next few weeks, every time I logged in to my account, I glanced admiringly at my friend counter. But I was caught off guard one day when my friend counter read 298—how did it go down?! This unexpected loss of friendship, even though I had no idea who I had lost as a friend, left me riddled with insecurity and self-doubt. But later in the week, the friend counter had climbed just over 300, and during this entire stretch of time, I hadn’t sent or accepted a single friend request.

A few days later, I was back down to 299. What was going on? Sure, I was still hovering near the bullseye of perfection, but I found it alarming that unbeknownst to me, I was occasionally losing (and sometimes regaining) friends, all without a single informative message from Facebook. Unable to deal with the tremendous self-loathing and general insecurity, I devised a plan to solve this mystery.

I clicked to view my full friend list, copied the entire list of names, and pasted it into an Excel spreadsheet, the best friend a finance person could ask for. (If it were socially acceptable, I would publish this blog in one giant spreadsheet). Every day, I checked my friend list, and if the total changed, I could use a favorite old Excel trick, the VLOOKUP formula, to quickly pinpoint who had appeared, or disappeared, from my friend list. The instant I came up with the plan, I knew I had a potentially blog-worthy story on my hands. If someone un-friended me, I would confront the perpetrator with a strongly worded, though still non-confrontational, Facebook message. The endless possibility for drama gave my little social experiment all the appeal of an Internet soap opera.

Over the next few weeks, I gleaned some interesting insights from my spreadsheet sleuthing. As I had originally suspected, the fluctuating friend phenomenon that I had been witnessing had two causes: people activating and deactivating their Facebook accounts, and people simply de-friending me. I noticed that my cousin had de- and re-activated her account a few times, which was odd, but not particularly interesting. But I came across two people—an old college friend and a co-worker—who still had active accounts, but our previous Facebook friendship had for some reason been severed. I wasn’t about to back down, so I moved into phase two of my plan: the confrontation.

I sent a friend request to each of those former Facebook friends, accompanied by a message asking why they had de-friended me. I hadn’t talked to either one in at least a year…we weren’t exactly the closest friends, obviously, but by the same token, the lack of communication meant that I hadn’t even had the opportunity to say or do anything offensive that would warrant the end of an otherwise healthy Facebook friendship. I anxiously awaited their responses, which, I felt certain, would provide me with pure blog-worthy gold.

The results of my experiment were spectacular…ly disappointing. One friend accepted my friend request within minutes and sent me a message, apologizing and explaining that her account had somehow gotten messed up and she lost her friend connections with a bunch of people. Hardly scandalous. And the former coworker simply ignored my friend request. To this day, I continue to sit in Facebook friend limbo with that coworker, unsure if it was an account error or if she simply decided to downsize her friend list, leaving my friendship on the cutting room floor.

So, as it turned out, my bold social experiment fizzled to a boring dead-end and turned out to be an impressive waste of time. But while carrying out my experiment, I logged in to Facebook much more frequently that I ever had in the past, and I realized that Facebook’s failure to inform people of lost friendship was only one weakness on one of the world’s most popular websites.

After logging in day after day, I realized that the newsfeed, the feature for which I had so publicly expressed my appreciation when I joined P.E.N.I.S. several years ago, was starting to get on my nerves. I enjoy the real time updates, but I was genuinely sick of reading everyone’s wall posts, which mainly consisted of people bragging about their personal accomplishments or fishing for compliments. Worse yet, one "friend" took it upon herself to share the trashy details as the sad saga of her failing marriage, unplanned pregnancy, and fleeing husband unfolded before the public's eyes. If I wanted this kind of news, I would call in sick and spend the afternoon watching low-brow courtroom reality TV.


It was at this time that I realized that Facebook could put an end to this annoying, pervasive issue with a simple twist on its revolutionary “Like” button. These days, every webpage has a “Like” button on it somewhere. It's become so commonplace that the “Like” button is revolutionizing the entire online advertising industry, allowing marketers to target ads at an audience with very specific interests. In fact, the “Like” button is one of the main reasons that Facebook is valued well into the billions of dollars.


But where’s the “Dislike” button?! Every time I log in, I can find at least 10 different wall posts that thoroughly deserve a “Dislike.” Yet my only options are to "Like" or to post a comment…and since posting a negative comment directly on someone’s wall post would be downright rude, I end up doing nothing.

As much as I’d like to take credit for it, the “Dislike” idea is far from revolutionary. Even Yahoo, which industry experts have long considered the elderly, uncool grandfather of the web, has a similar feature. In the comments section below Yahoo News stories, users can give either a thumbs up or thumbs down rating for a particular comment. If a comment receives too many downward-pointing thumbs, it gets hidden from the site and replaced by “Comment hidden due to low rating.” How great is that? The setup allows society to tell a person that their idea sucks so bad that it deserves to be kicked off the Internet, a place where anyone can post anything! Seems like a fantastic idea to me!

Better yet—and this is where I throw my own brilliant hat into the ring—the Internet desperately needs an “Indifferent” button. Let’s face it, there are times when you want someone to know you read what they wrote, but you just plain don’t care. You may not find their statement particularly annoying nor particularly valuable, so it’s worth dropping them a line and saying, “I read it, but I really don’t think it was worth my time.” (Not unlike this blog post, perhaps). If nothing else, the “Indifferent” button will gently pressure offending wall posters to raise the quality and thoughtfulness of their postings.

Just like that, over a span of just a few weeks, I found three glaring opportunities. For a company worth several billion dollars, I figure a “minus one” logo and the addition of “Indifferent” and “Dislike” buttons has gotta be worth at least $500 million. Mark Zuckerberg, if you’re reading this, you can post something in the comments section if you'd like to request an address where you can send my check.

Note: In the spirit of full disclosure, I regrettably admit that after writing this blog post, I stumbled upon a website describing a new Facebook app called "Unfriend Finder" that automatically does what my maze of Excel spreadsheets did for me. That's right, my idea wasn't as original as I first thought. Worse yet, the author of this website, Prateek Bansal, not only stole my idea, but he created an application to solve the great Facebook mystery. It felt like the GMAT all over, being outperformed by a foreigner. It would have been great to know that my idea was already floating around the internet before taking the time to write this blog post...

Don't you hate it when someone steals your ideas before you even have a chance to come up with them? (For the record, though, the article was posted in June, months after I had come up with the idea for this blog post and started keeping track of the changes in my friend list. So, good 'ol Prateek beat me to the punch in publishing his piece. But I've still got him on the "Dislike" and "Indifferent" buttons...