I would like to place a motion on the table that bans the use of the word "consider" from all Match Questions.

I would consider a lot of things. Doesn't mean I would do any of them. "Would you consider being involved in a 3 person relationship with no sex outside the group?" Yep, I'd consider that- for about 3 seconds. "Would you consider jumping the Grand Canyon on a motorcycle, Evel Knievel style?" I'd consider that too, for as long as it takes my natural survival instincts to kick in.

The problem here is: I am forced to answer YES to those questions, because I would in fact, consider them. So seriously. Stop. As Inigo Montoya once said: "you keep on using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

All in favor?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChanTFSmqao

Do you like 80's Metal? Do you like AWESOME ROCK N ROLL shows?

Then you should be at the DIXIE TAVERN tomorrow night to see one other than IRON MULLET.

To quote from their recent myspace bulletin:

You've witnessed the AWESOME that is Hair Force....you've felt the FURY that is (was) HAZMAT....

Now come see the FURIAWESOMENESS that is......IRON MULLET!!!!

That's right, folks - Hair Force and Hazmat are combining forces to bring you a rockstravaganza like you have never seen!! Oh - did I mention it's Halloween? That means costumes! It means GIRLS in slutty costumes! It means Hair Force and Hazmat's usual level of costumed madness will be CRANKED UP a notch! Maybe TWO NOTCHES!!!

I can't imagine what more you could ask for!! What? You already had plans for Halloween? Pffft! Like what you were gonna do is more AWESOME than THIS!!

Here's the four one one:

Halloween Night
The Dixie Tavern @ 41 and Windy Hill Rd
10 pm until LATE
The ULTIMATE Halloween Rock n Roll Fest!!!

Be there or be the ONLY one at the watercooler on Monday saying "yeah...my Halloween was okay...nothing special..."

DON'T BE THAT GUY!!!

Edit: Wow OKC sucks at the formatting.

For those of you who are not abreast of my recent spiritual changes, I have been conducting a series of social/mental experiments lately. This was yet another.

The idea: spend a 24-hour period blind.

A sense of sight is easy to take for granted. In fact I'd wager that most of us hardly give it any thought. Even those of us who read off a little thank you list to a Creator every night before bed don't usually include "thank you for letting me be able to see." I was no different, but I started thinking about it before conducting this little exercise. I did a little pre-conditioning: leaving lights off, performing simple tasks with no lights, etc. The biggest challenge was simply how to fill the time. What do blind people DO? Since I was only to be blind for a day, learning to read braille seemed like overkill, but I honestly couldn't think of much of anything that I do on a regular basis that doesn't directly involve my eyes. I did manage to arrange for a day when my roommate was off work - so she could help with getting around the house, and for someone to take me to lunch and dinner, and finally for someone to come over and entertain me in the evening. So with that barebones plan, I plunged (blindly) ahead. (oh god the jokes write themselves)

I figured bandages rather than a blindfold would prompt fewer questions and subsequent explanations. A pair of sunglass over the top cut down on the "wtf" factor as well. So - the last thing I did before I went to bed was to bandage my eyes. Just enough pressure to keep my eyelids closed underneath there. I could still see differences between light and dark, but that was it. For all intents and purposes, I was blind.

2:30 am, Wednesday.

The first walk into bed went fine. My side of the bed is a straight shot from the bathroom, plus I usually make this walk in relative darkness. A minor confidence boost to be sure.

???? am

Woke up due to Nature calling. Now once again, the bathroom door is a straight shot from my side of the bed. In fact, if I stand facing the door with my right thigh pressed against the bed and walk straight forward, I will run right into the door. So this was the method I attempted. Being newly blind, I had adopted sort of a zombie shuffle walking style. Right foot forward, arms out, take a half step then bring the left foot up to match, repeat until I reach my destination or run into something. So I arrive just to the left of the door in a corner. Grab the doorknob, open it and step through. My feet are still on carpet - which would be fine except my bathroom has a tile floor. Uhhhh. What the hell? Being suddenly lost in your own house is quite possibly one of the worst, most vertigo-inducing feelings I have ever experienced. It's like a burst of "everything you know is WRONG." I know I'm still in my house, and for all intents and purposes, still "safe" but wow - that feeling sucks. it's like this wild burst of panic. So much for the confidence boost for making it into bed.

The reason I have question marks above for the time is due to another problem I noticed. I never had any idea what time it was. I guess that's why they make talking clocks and watches without glass on the face, but yeah - was totally unprepared for this one. I knew what time I had set my alarm for, but once I made it back to bed, I had no idea if it was going to go off in 10 minutes or 2 hours. Very frustrating. For those of you of the mind that not having a clock to watch would be very freeing - you can have it. I'd rather know what time it is. All subsequent times were figured out from asking whoever was around.

12:20 pm

Making my first foray out of the house for lunch. I have to say - good caretakers are worth their weight in gold. It took J a minute to adjust to the fact that he had to manage my personal space as well as his, but we were fine after he initialyl walked me into the bushes next to my front walk. Riding in a car with my eyes shut can tend to make me a tad motion sick. I guess it's from not having your sight to cue your body on how to prepare for upcoming turns and such. I did pretty well at telling roughly where we were at any given moment. But - the trip is basically a straight shot, and I doubt it would have taken more than a few turns to completely disorient me. Which leads me to another topic: trust.

I consider myself to be fairly self-sufficient. It was difficult for me to give up the amount of control over my destiny as I had to while doing this. You are pretty much placing yourself wholly in someone else's (hopefully) capable hands. I can't imagine having to do it at all times. They could be taking you ANYWHERE and you really wouldn't know.

Eating wasn't much of a problem since lunch was a black bean burger and some fries. Easy to tell by touch what was what, and once you learn to set your drink down in the same place every time it's pretty simple. Did prove the "bandages = less questions" theory since our waitress, who was familiar with us since we go there regularly, just assumed I had come to lunch straight from the doctor's office and didn't even ask what happened or anything.

1:30 pm

Returned from lunch and time to tackle the problem: how to kill the time? T decided to watch a movie and I tried listening in. You'd be surprised how many scenes in a movie don't have any dialog at all. So you're sitting there trying to figure out what's going on. Even some of the dialog doesn't help any:

"what's that?"
"what?"
"that."
"over there? that?"
"yeah, that."
"I don't know..."

Argh.

Since the movie idea failed horribly, I got T to start the Hair Force playlist on my computer so I just sat and played bass for a couple of hours. What else am I gonna do, seriously?

4:30 pm

Took a nap, as per usual. :) My eyes were getting a little sore from the bandages, so as I got in bed, I piled the blankets on my head and pulled them off. Ewwww my eyes were all gummed together with tears. I made a mental note to solve that when I got up.

6:00 pm

Got a call from Alexis confirming dinner plans. How do blind people screen their calls? I don't answer for just ANYBODY you know, but I had to yesterday. Anyone I don't usually pick up for - you totally missed your chance yesterday. ;) Decided to take a bath, so as not to have to remove the bandages. It's not like I have any hair to wash anyway. Ran a bath, got in and pulled the bandages up so I could wipe away the eye goo with a warm washcloth. This made things a good deal more comfortable but my eyes were still bothering me. Particularly the right one. Every time I would move it, it would just burn. Had to have Tisha pick out clothes - another blind people mystery, I guess. I have known blind people, including one who lived alone, yet he was always well-dressed. I was back to trust on this one. I told T what I wanted to wear, but really she could have put me in anything and I would have had no way of knowing. (She didn't) Killed another hour playing bass.

7:30 pm

Alexis arrives for dinner. Being an experienced blind caretaker, this was by far the smoothest experience. One minor point though- We went to a soup/salad sort of place. Salad eating is not easy for the blind. I eventually had to adopt a "stab at the middle, hope I got something, push edges into middle, repeat" method of eating. There were many times during the meal when a completely empty fork hit my mouth. Kudos to Alexis for not laughing at me. I'm told I did reasonably well a far as cleaning the plate goes. We decided to go get water ice/gelato afterward. At one point a chunk of my lemon ice fell into my lap and I couldn't find it, which led to Alexis having to grope around my lap, while the piece was melting and slipping through her fingers. Both of us were giggling during all this - so I hope it was as good for any observers as it was for us. :) Arrived back home right around 9 and we sat and chatted for a few. My eyes were really sore at this point and Alexis wisely suggested that since I wasn't venturing out in public any more, that perhaps I should switch to a simple bandanna as a blindfold. I did this and it was MUCH better.

At some point Wendi called and said she was on her way. Alexis took off then. Went upstairs, talked to T a bit, grabbed a book I wanted Wendi to read to me, and made my way back downstairs to wait. On my way to the couch I once again got completely lost. Cue another horrible moment of panic. What a bizarre feeling that is, seriously.

10:15 pm

Wendi arrives to find me sitting on the couch doing nothing. She asks how long I have been sitting there and I really don't know exactly how long - not more than 10 minutes or so. She comes and sits down and reads me a story. :D. This is the most entertainment I have had all day that didn't involve food. She hangs out for quite a while talking and just chilling on the couch. I had been having some off and on dizziness throughout the day, and around 1 am I started not to feel so well, so I said goodnight. She left and I went up to get ready for bed.

1:30 am, Thursday

I make my way into the bathroom and get ready for bed - teeth brushing, potty break, etc while still blindfolded. Due to the aforementioned tear problem, after I was done with all that I went ahead and removed the blindfold, grabbed a washcloth and managed to eventually pry my eyelids open. Still no lights on, but when you've been in the dark for nearly 24 hours, even the smallest light seems bright. Tried to look at the messages on my phone but that was totally blinding me so I gave it up until the morning. My room seemed brightly lit due to the presence of the alarm clock, the usually dim indiglo night light and T's cell phone. Got into bed.

8:30 am

Oh blessed sight!

==========================================

So there it is. Another interesting side effect was that being blind almost totally killed my libido. I guess we really ARE visually stimulated more than anything else, cause I just had NO interest at all in anything sexual. I guess I didn't get the deep personal insights I was hoping to achieve, nor did my other senses hone themselves to razor sharpness. My sense of smell improved noticeably but nothing sharpened to the point of Kung Fu Master or anything.

All in all, I'd give the entire experience 3 stars out of 5.

Be thankful for your sight, people - trust me!

Clicky!

Be there, or suck.

Has anyone else noticed this?

I somehow got selected to be one of the first users to try the "Quiver" matches here on OKC. Good lord. Normally the matching here is pretty good, which is why I can't understand why Quiver is failing as hard as it has been.

The "matches" I get have been universally bad. I mean not even close. I don't mean that they're bad people - I'm sure they are just as nice as anyone else. I just mean they are amazingly ill-matched to me.

Is Quiver the OKC equivalent of making sure everybody on the team gets to play, even if it's for 2 minutes in the last period when your team is already ahead by 5 goals?

So has ANYONE actually NOT rejected a Quiver match? I'd like to hear about it, if so.

Wow. I added the monk thing to my profile and my responses dropped to exactly ZERO.

What? You think just because I'm a monk I'm not fun?

My monkdom (monkhood? monkness?) has very little to do with religion, in the classical sense. I had even mentioned to think more along the lines of the Shaolin monks, not Christian monks. The Shaolin Temples were like modern day Universities. They were centers of learning and culture.

Anyway, my particular Order doesn't prohibit anything fun - sex, drugs, drink, rock n roll, etc. (Please keep in mind that while the order may not prohibit any of those things, that doesn't mean I do or do not engage in all ((or any)) of them). Trust me. I'm just as fun as I was pre-Monkdom and I'm told that's "pretty freakin fun!"

I suppose the other fear is that hanging out with me means I'm going to try and shove my religion down your throat. Trust me, I can't stand proselytizing anymore than you can. If I even HAD a religion in that sense, I wouldn't push it on you.

So don't be afraid, write back. Plus - I use cool words like 'proselytize'. ;)

We've all sat here and answered questions. It's nearly a requirement for this site. I'm not sure what sort of magical number wizardry is going on behind the scenes, but the questions answered determine someone's Match, Friend and Enemy percentages.


I also like the fact that you can rank how important a question is to you, or even mark it as mandatory - so anyone messaging you HAS to answer it. That's a good way to weed out potential red flags.


While I like the question concept, the way some of the questions are asked is plain awful at times. So, I'd like to take the opportunity to hit upon some of the things I've seen in an effort to help future question writers craft better questions.

• 
  
• The word consider
• 
  

This is far and away my pet peeve. "Would you consider dating ______?" "Would you consider doing ______?" Look. I would consider a LOT of things. That doesn't mean I'm going to do ANY of them. I'd consider driving my car off a bridge. I'd consider making out with YOUR MOM. I'd consider giving that lady over there loading her groceries into her trunk a massive wedgie. Am I going to actually DO any of those things? Of course not (except the one about your mom - is she hot? ;) ) Yet, due to the use of the word consider I am forced to answer "Yes" since I would, in fact, consider them. EDIT: Oh god. I just now saw "Would you ever consider ________" Wow. Way to make the question even more vague and nebulous.

• 
  
• Questions Which Serve Only to Validate the Asker's Past Mistake(s)
• 
  

I'll admit I find these more amusing than anything else. What I mean are things like: "Would you date someone who had cheated in a past relationship. If it was only that one time and we didn't really do anything anyway, just kissing and stuff?" I see what you did there - you made a mistake. Got too drunk at a party, and that girl was REALLY cute and you barely got her all the way naked and how could you blame a guy, really? But come on - are the affirmative responses from several hundred complete strangers on the internet going to make you feel validated? Is it going to make you feel better that your girlfriend dumped your ass as a result? It's not. I promise. You fucked up. Learn from it, and move on. it's not like you're going to be able to take the answers back to your now ex-girlfriend and go "see!?"

• 
  
• Massive Philosophical Question With a Yes-No Answer
• 
  

"Is There a God? Yes/No?" "Do you believe in Love? Yes/No" Hahahaha. Are you serious? Those are questions people have been trying to answer since we crawled out of the caves. Yes or No doesn't even come close to even beginning to encapsulate my answers to those questions. This also includes any question where your "Yes" or "No" response should require some serious explanation or qualification. Here's one I just saw: "Are some human lives worth more than others? Yes/No?" I wouldn't want to meet someone who would answer that with a SIMPLE Yes or No. That's a complicated question and the answer is just as complicated.


Ok. I have ranted long enough. Feel free to post your favorite horrible questions!