So, I found a girl who's pretty close to perfect for me. Serious Catholic, cute, seems like an interesting person. We exchanged some sporadic messages hampered somewhat by the fact that she didn't log onto the site very often. After a month of no reply with her having logged in during that time, I sent a message saying that I wasn't sure if I'd missed a social cue or not, that if she was just busy, I'd appreciate her sending me a "Hey, I'm here but buried in work" and if she really didn't want to talk to me, that was cool, just wanted to cover my bases. And thereafter, I put her off my mind figuring that it was better that way no matter the reasons. And yesterday, I saw I had a message from her. Good news is, she still wants to talk to me. Bad news, she gave up OKC for Lent (well, more to the point, she gave up on various social websites because she felt she was spending too much time on them). I was going to message back saying that I have no problem with messages composed on Sundays (Sundays don't count in the 40 days of Lent and I figured it was a decent in-crowd quip) but she'd deleted her account.

So... I set myself a note to check a week or two after Easter to see if she returns. And if not, I'll continue putting her out of my mind just as I tried before.

On a side note, it's really awkward on these sites when weeks go by with no reply. Since this is the only means to communicate with these people, and so much of the emotional content doesn't get conveyed in messages, it's really hard to tell whether they've just been busy or if you're getting a polite brush-off. *grumble* Oh well, there are those out there who will send a message stating outright that they're not interested and I am thankful for them.

I've seen a few people comment on this in their profiles and their journals, but one of the aspects of this site which can be a bit vexing (although I can't think of a good solution) is that one pretty much has to choose whether one is searching for friends, short term dates, or long term dates. Why is that? Well, the criteria can be completely different. Let's take religion for example. I have no problem having friends of different religions. I love debate and it's great to get the views of other people. However, I do want to marry Catholic, if for no other reasons than a) it's a big part of my life and I want to share it with my prospective wife and b) I have an obligation to raise my kids Catholic and that could cause conflicts if the prospective wife believes Catholic rearing is wrong. Somewhere in between, I want someone with fairly similar values for short term dating, but I don't think I could take it into anything permanent without them matching more closely. *wry grin* I made the mistake of thinking love would smooth the way in a prior relationship and that got really messy.

So, everyone talks about the weather, but no one does anything about it. What do I propose as a solution to this issue of what we're matching to? Well, honestly, I don't have a good solution. Short of us having to answer every question thrice, once for friends, once for casual dating, and once for the serious stuff, there's no real way to deal with it. As of now, my approach is to answer the questions for the ultimate goal of the lifelong relationship. If someone looks or sounds interesting but doesn't fit my criteria (which often correlates to them having a low match percentage and/or a high enemy percentage), I try to consider whether they would fit in as a friend or something casual.

So, how does everyone else deal with this?

If you hooked up with someone and a pregnancy unexpectedly resulted, would you feel that you should get married?

• Yes.
• No.

This is actually an interesting question. My answer would be no. While I would feel responsible for the child, and would contribute time and money to care for them, accidental pregnancies are a bad way to start a marriage. It can work out, but it's kind of "forced into it" situation, so it's easy for their to be regrets and recriminations. That said, with me intending to remain a virgin until marriage, hopefully I'll never face such a problem.

I know I've written entries about this before, talked about it IRL, but the subject came up in a conversation tonight (OK, so it didn't actually come up... I wanted to launch into it, but a) for various reasons, it might not have been politic and b) I'd had alcohol earlier and when I do that, I lose the ability to tell when people are bored with what I'm saying) so I figured I would repost about it. ^_^ Heck, not like I write that much on here anyhow other than my "Boohoo, I'm sick or I've got a personality conflict with someone" entries. Anyhow, I wanted to point out again that weblogs, "blogs" in the vernacular, are a peculiar social phenomenon which I believe to be fairly unique to our age in their mix of privacy and publicness and I think it's important for people, both those writing blogs and those reading them, to understand that. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that there are four methods of traditional writing which weblogs serve as. The problem is, they serve as all four at once despite these four methods ranging from highly public to highly private, anonymous to publicly signed.

Diary

Most of us have probably written in a diary or journal at least once in our lives. It was probably jealously guarded, sometimes under lock and key or written in a personal code. The pages within would contain our innermost thoughts, our hopes and our dreams, things which were so private that we never wanted the world to know. But beyond those innermost secrets, it was also a mundane list of happenings in our life. Those pages contained not only our struggles to define who we are and what we stand for, but also the fact that the Saturday before last, we went out to see a movie and bought a small coke. We write about our first kiss, both the mundane details of when and where it happened, but also how it felt, how it made us feel, and how it changed our worldview. Putting it down on paper made it more real and often served as a way of reminding ourselves not only of who we are, but also of who we were. I know of many people who've taken great comfort in finding an old diary and reading about half-forgotten snippets of childhood, reliving those misty memories. ^_^ They also tended to cringe a lot when they saw how dumb and naive they were back then... But ultimately, the diary served as a way of preserving a time in our life, crystallizing it so that it remains days later and decades later.

Weblogs can easily serve this purpose. Not only does one get to avoid writer's cramp, but it can become much easier to lock or encrypt your entries, and your diary becomes accessible to you from anywhere with an Internet connection. Most weblogs today support the ability to maintain such a private journal, although it is not the default behavior. The default behavior is public, which leads us to the next three writing methods. Still, I feel that this method of writing is the one followed by many people, writing out their innermost feelings as if they were private. Some of this has to do with the concept of Anonymity in Mass which I will touch on later.

Water Cooler Gossip

I'm not even certain if most workplaces even have a water cooler anymore, but I think everyone will understand what I mean here. When you're with your friends, you chew the fat and shoot the messenger. Er... well, you shoot something at least. Anyhow, there's seldom a defined topic, although there are definite trends, but people talk about what's on their minds and others chime in. The conversation frequently morphs around several topics, but everyone's participating as a small community. The early BBSs (Bulletin Board Systems) that predate the Internet held that role. You had a place where you could communicate with like-minded people, generally by posting something, getting feedback, and replying to that feedback. Today, this is how many of the "social networking" sites work. And suddenly, that diary entry about your first kisses can be commented on by your friends. The entries are no longer solitary and static, but are rather community efforts and dynamic. It's a way of sharing your experiences with others. It is self-expression and sharing of self. It is educational since you get to pool your experiences with your compatriots and get advice based on what they know and what they have experienced.

In terms of weblogs, there is usually a method offered for creating just this kind of setup. It's sometimes called a Protected post or a Friends-Only post, but what it does is allow others to view and comment on entries, but only if you have "whitelisted" them, putting them on the list of people who can read that particular entry. This system is far from perfect. First, most sites only allow a single whitelist which people are either on or off. It's generally not feasible to set it up so that everyone except one person can view it, or that the usualy group plus one can view it. This kind of entry generally requires the readers to be signed up for the same service, so there are additional hassles there. Information is easily copied, so a single compromised person in your group can leak the entire contents. And, lastly, there's the concept that You Can't Delete Things For Good which, again, will be covered later in the entry.

Product Publication

Sometimes you really want what you write to be read by others. Maybe it's a bit of poetry that you want to share, or a novel you're writing. Maybe you're doing reviews of webcomics. If you're looking to go professional and actually make money, then you might make a site entirely devoted to your particular bit of craft, but often these are incidental little whimsies that get mixed in with the rest of the entries. Unlike the prior two methods, you want everyone to read what you're writing. This is unlike traditional publications in that a) unlike newspapers and publishing houses, there's very little control over what's published so you don't have to deal with editors or writing what's "saleable" and b) unlike vanity presses, you don't have to pay to publish. As noted in the first two links for this method, this can easily become a job in itself, complete with the rewards (money and (relative) fame) and headaches (pressure to perform).

This can easily straddle the line between private and public entries in that there will always be people who want to live vicariously through others. Maybe you could be the next Tucker Max or the next Confessing Porn Store Clerk (There was another site along this vein done by a girl, but it disappeared off of the Internet shortly after she was offered a radio deal). Even if you never make money from it, there will always be people who get a thrill out of looking at the IP log and seeing they had a thousand visits the day before. It is fame, of a sort.

Message in a Bottle

The last type of communication are the ones which you write, knowing that you're writing to complete strangers and, as much as anything, grasping for a connection in the universe. People used to put messages in bottles. In elementary school, we released balloons with messages. You knew that 90% of the messages would never be found and another 9% would be trashed by those who found them (37.2% of statistics are made up on the spot!) but there was that occasional 1%... and when you're posting on something like the Internet where there are hundreds of millions of people, even a response rate of a hundreth of a percent gives you several hundred responses.

This actually where people usually get into the most trouble in blogging. Remember that Anonymity in Mass I mentioned? Basically, because the Internet is so huge, people assume that they're anonymous, or are at least not likely to be found. It doesn't matter if you're complaining about how much your classmate smells because with the huge scale of the Internet, your reader is as likely to be Jean DuLac of Paris, France as it is to be that classmate. I'm sure that all of you can spot the error of this logic, but it is nonetheless fairly prevalent. And, honestly, if you avoid providing information about yourself, it can work to some degree. While probability is highly random, it is not statistically likely that someone who knows you will stumble upon your blog. And even if they do find it, and recognize details, you have a degree of anonymity in that there may be dozens of people who could have written the entry. In actuality, most people sign their blogs and cross-link them with those of their friends, often to provide the Water Cooler Effect, and proving that a given piece of writing was done by a particular author, with sufficient samples of work, is relatively trivial these days. Besides which, many people don't plan on hiding their identity, either because they see no need or because they figure they're anonymous enough.

Summary

So, ultimately, what's my point? *wrinkles nose* Because I'm writing this off the cuff, I actually wound up with two points.

Imprimus

Many of the problems people face with weblogs has to do with the fact that it shares aspects of all four of these writing styles. The first two are private and the fourth is anonymous, but ultimately, the entries frequently become public and assignable due to negligence, accident, or the efforts of others. People will post about their innermost feelings and complain about people in their life, assuming that they're the only person reading the first entry and that only their friends will read the second one. They will make a half-hearted attempt, if any, for anonymity even when they're posting things that could come back to bite them. And even when they realize that their entries are public, they still write them as if they were private, which can lead to its own issues. Among friends, you think nothing of saying that so-and-so is an idiot or that you've occasionally considered an anonymous one-night-stand. If the same information were placed on a public billboard, you would be chagrined. Well, the Internet is one huge public billboard.

Secundus

There are aspects of the Internet which need to be remembered. First, more people read your site than you think and it's easier to find it than you think. Web search sites typically also search blog sites and the way in which linking models work means that blogs often feature high on search results. Even if you've only mentioned names once or twice on your blog, they still might come up. If you link to friends, or post comments with that account, the situation is even more precarious in that once one person is found, the links can be followed to find the others within the community. For example, I know from looking at site traffic that a large number of people in New Jersey have been reading my site after visiting the site of another actor in the show, on whose entries I've commented. I suspect that many of these are members of the Shakespeare group I'm in. The conversation tonight which led to this entry involved the fact that people in the group had read this other actor's site and were unhappy (Och... I lied. There will be a third point after this about Open Hidden Communication) about what they read. Which means they've probably read my site and may be unhappy with me. *shrug* Not that I expected anonymity on the Internet, but it's still a bit surprising sometimes. And even if you restrict access to yourself or to your group, passwords can be broken or people can be compromised and you may never know it happened.

Secondly, it can be very hard to delete things on the Internet. Because others can save perfect copies, it's easy to lose control of information. Post an embarrassing picture of yourself while you're drunk and it may show up in a dozen weblogs of friends, been emailed out to another score, and saved to a gross of hard drives or more. If you make a forum post about having stolen office supplies before, it might very well be found by public employers. One solution is to carefully control your output so that you never post anything you might ever become ashamed of (although a large number of older people with tattoos can tell you that what seemed cool and right then might not look the same twenty years later). Or you can decide that the greatest regret is never doing anything worth regretting. Personally, I usually go with the latter although I try to put some thought into what I post so that I at least won't regret it in the morning. Doesn't always work, but I try.

Incidentally, there are attempts to make people publicly aware of these quirks of the Internet.

They're a bit heavy-handed, but aren't most PSAs? And there's definitely truth in them.

Tertius

This gets more into whether we consider blog entries to be personal speech. To give an example, a friend of mine in Pittsburgh got irked at me a month or so ago because I hadn't been reading her LiveJournal account and therefore she had to relate the incidents through talking. This is almost a fifth sort of writing, the Family Christmas Card where you relate what's been going on for the past year, assuming that the people who want to keep up with your life will read it. Actually, one of the reasons I don't regularly read this friend's site is that she has a tendency to write for particular people in her semi-public (friends list) entries. I will admit to having been guilty of this one too, writing an entry about someone, not mentioning them by name, but knowing that they would recognize themselves if they read they entry. I try to avoid that these days by directly mentioning names when I'm talking about someone in particular. But still, this can seem like talking behind backs. In a sense, it's Water Cooler Gossip, but because it being difficult to delete things from the Internet (particularly since I seldom try to do so), that comment I made in passing to a friend to blow off steam may be viewable by the target some months later when I've largely forgotten what I've said. Either way, you run into an interesting social problem when you're the target of such an entry.

Can you mention it to the person who wrote the entry? Theoretically, it's a public post, but it was not directed to you. Myself, if I feel bothered, I will talk to the person. Usually, they've already forgotten what they wrote (as I have in similar situations) and are surprised that it bothered me like it did. I've actually noticed the opposite situation when I'm the writer, with people quietly seething and me unawares that they've read the entry or were angered. *shrug* I don't have a solution. I'm just commenting on the phenomena. Blog entries currently fall in an odd social void between public and private.

And... I've probably rambled on long enough. For your amusement, here's another PSA on Internet safety:

Ostensibly, they updated the test. I got the same result as before, Slow Dancer. *shrug* It fits well enough.

A friend on Xanga posted an asking guys how exactly they go about flirting. Well, I answered and then realized that it's relevant for here. So, here goes:
^_^ My style can probably be best described as a combination of obviousness and mixed signals. When I'm really into a person, and I think it a possibility, I get so nervous and embarrassed that I barely manage to say two words to the girl at a time, more or less darting furtive glances and trying to figure out how to politically bring up my feelings without sounding like a complete idiot. With girls who I'm not really interested in, or where the situation is not tenable (too young, already with someone, etc), I'm a shameless natural flirt who responds to any flirting back with renewing my fervor. Frankly, my only hope is that the girl I'm interested in will flirt with me and I'll recognize it as such, for then I'll gain the confidence to flirt back. Unfortunately, I'm usually pretty oblivious to anything less than the blatant. And so the social mores work against me.

^_^ Ok, so I'm not actually giving my name out on the site (although those who've spoken with me via IM almost certainly know it), but it's apparently rarer than I thought. 13 of us... so why do I keep getting confused for the Benedictine monk jazz pianist and the Digital Art teacher/author?
HowManyOfMe.comThere are
13
people with my name
in the U.S.A.
How many have your name?

There was a health fair at work. I went ahead and got some of my vital statistics:

Height: 5'10"
Weight: 168.8 lb
BMI: 24.2
Fat %: 14.2%
BMR (Metabolism rate): 7627 kJ / 1823 kcal
Fat Mass: 24.0 lb
FFM (Non-fat Mass): 144.8 lb
TBW (Water Weight): 106.0 lb

Cholesterol level: 159

In short, I'm in pretty good shape. My weight was higher than expected, but the amount of body fat is very low which, according to the lady I spoke to, means that it's likely muscle weight, which is good. I'm in healthy ranges all over, so no real room to complain. Pity my cardio endurance is still so low...

Imagine that scientists create a new drug. When swallowed as a pill, it will completely and permanently eliminate feelings of guilt for prior events. Testing reveals that there are no harmful medical side effects. How should this pill be distributed?

• Over the counter to anyone who wants it.
• By doctor's prescription only.
• It should not be distributed at all.

This is a fairly interesting question. My first impulse was "not at all" because my immediate thought was people using it as an after-the-fact excuse to not feel guilt, much like they use alcohol as a before-the-fact excuse. But, then again, there are people out there literally crippled with guilt, sometimes over things that weren't their fault. For those people, it ought to be perscribable. Still, it should be well-regulated because guilt is an important part of the normal psyche, a governing force on our id.

I was recently reading an article about the raids in Texas on the LDS-schismed cult. While the reason for them raiding the compound had more to do with statutory rape, they of course brought up the spectre of polygamy in the cult's practice. Which led me to thinking, why do we even criminalize it anymore?

Now please understand that I'm not a believer in polygamy myself, being one of those Catholics who believes in one marriage at a time, and that one marriage lasting until the end the lives of one of the participants. But really, given the current bent of society, why do we make it illegal? It's not like there's any laws on the books anymore making it illegal for a person to be married to someone, and sleep with others. There are various legal aspects involving property ownership, children, and inheritance, but those could easily be resolved by contracts. So ultimately, from a cultural and legal standpoint, what's stopping us besides tradition?

Note, of course, that without more of a gender imbalance (births tending to be roughly 50/50 in sex), you do start running into supply issues if only one gender gets the right to have multiple spouses; supposedly, they had of-age brides in this cult until they realized they were running out of enough Mormon women for every man to get multiple brides. But hey, it's the new millennium. Men and women ought to be equal, right?