Who Cares? You Should. Or Should You? Who Cares?

In light of my currently single status, I thought I'd take a minute and bask in how awesome it is not to be in love with a boy. I mean really, you do know how much drama they create, don't you? And we girls just can't seem to avoid overanalyzing, no matter how hard we try. Name one girl that never analyzes and I will... well, I actually won't promise anything, because that's just setting me up to be proven wrong and I'd like to go on ignorance of that superior female for the time being. Makes me feel better about myself knowing that every other girl thinks too much. After all, you know what they say about Misery and Company...

(Not that thinking = misery. Don't take that wrong...)

I've lived a few years on this planet (because, you know, I'm from Venus and they -- those strange, confusing, baffling, funny creatures that leave us nonplussed -- are from Mars.) and in those years, I've learned a few things about guys. Not that it's ever been very helpful. Boys are like the flu: always defying any attempts to pin them down and establish a universal solution. Granted, I'm sure they say the same about girls, but I'm choosing to ignore that for now.

Here are a few adages I've been given by guys. I'm going to call them my Flu Vaccines.

Vaccine No.1: Stick your neck out there and then pull into your shell again. It catches the guy's interest and then intrigues him because you're being mysterious. So... you want me to be a turtle? What a wonderful analogy. I'm scaly, cold-blooded, chunky, slow, and snappish. Nice. Well, guymanthing, meet shell. Probably all you're going to see. Ever.

Vaccine No.2: Just be honest. This may work easier in the non-Utah world, where "I like you" is not code for "BREAK OUT THE INVITATIONS, GET THE DRESS, BOOK THE TEMPLE, WE'RE GETTIN' HITCHED!!!!!" Because, honestly? That just seems to send the wrong message around here...

Vaccine No.3: Guys like the damsels in distress because it makes them feel needed. Um. In case you've forgotten, or just, well, never noticed, I happen to be a damsel. I'm a young, unmarried woman, which is all that a damsel is. Don't believe me, look it up. And guys happen to distress me. So that pretty much guarantees that I will always be a "Damsel in Distress" when the boys are around.
Okay, so I'm not usually in distress. But have you ever tried to take care of someone who is always in need of help? It's exhausting. No thank you.
And: "it makes them feel needed"??? Really? They really don't know that they're needed already?? Girls need guys. Fact of life. Yes, they drive us nuts. They frustrate us to the point that we'd gladly trade them all away for a Grade A chick flick, some ice cream, and a nice cushy job...... if we didn't NEED them so darn much. Duh. Can guys honestly believe we suffer through the ins and outs of dating for the fun of it???

Vaccine No.4: The way to a man's heart is through his stomach. Which is true enough. Looks like the losers like me who really hate to cook are totally out of luck. And it is my humble opinion that -- leaving aside the anorexics and bulimics -- the way to anyone's heart is through their stomach. I once nearly kissed a boy just because he brought me ice cream. If that's not a connection between heart and stomach, I don't know what is. So cook away, little homemaking women. Your roommates who don't cook -- like me -- will love you too.

So which of these is the most helpful? Remember how the flu actually works? Yeah. These are all just outdated vaccines that only work on 0.02% of the male population. My mother, my genius genius mother, actually offered the perfect solution: Just. Stop. Caring.

I was like, "What?"

But then the genius of her statement dawned on me. Not caring is the off switch for a girl's analytical subroutines. After all, who -- barring the microbiologists staring into their petri dishes -- would want to analyze the life cycle of a single-celled organism? The truth is that most of us just don't care about it, so we don't do it.

So turn off that analysis running through your head right now, because I just know that you're thinking about whether you do this or not. Tell your stinking brain to get out of your way and just be yourself. And if your 'self' is hyperanalytical by nature... well... good luck with that one. I don't have a lot of light to shed on that problem. Sucks for you.

So maybe those blasted Flu Vaccines aren't so outdated after all. The Let-Me-Tap-on-Your-Shell, the Honesty, the Let-Me-See-You-Need-Me, the Natural Human Desire for Sustenance (which, incidentally, proves to our sometimes-dense guys that we're not robots in female bodies), all of these adages from guys are really just different ways of trying to tell you to let them see you. The you deep down inside that gets lost in the analysis. Naturally, since they're guys, they don't say it very well, but that's part of why we love them. Big points for trying.

The road of love (and life) is bumpy. Let's be honest about that. If you spend your whole life tip-toeing along and hyperanalyzing every move you make before you make it, how on earth do you expect to enjoy life? So suck it up, roll with the punches, take the hits, and come out of life looking like you've really lived.

Wow. That was surprisingly profound. Go me.

Beloved Uncle Mike

I was just made aware that Michael Jackson died today and felt the need to post and pay my respects and share at least one fond memory.

Now, there are a few hazards that come with being me. For one, no one ever says or spells my first name right the first time. And my last name... well...

I have been asked, at least 10 times in my lifetime, whether I was related to Michael Jackson. Um, no. Allow me to point out a few major reasons why this is so:

1) I. Am. Not. Black. Never have been, never will be. Nothing against black people -- they're actually kind of awesome. But my genetic code dictates a very low concentration of melanin which means that I get very pale in the winter and very pink in the summer. Michael Jackson, although whiter at his death than I will ever be, originally looked like this:

2) Do you know how many Jacksons there are out there??? According to http://howmanyofme.com/search/:

• There are 950,931 people in the U.S. with the last name Jackson.
• Statistically the 13th most popular last name.

So what are the odds that I'm actually related to him? About 1/951,000. Well, better than that, because I'm related to a bunch of Jacksons, but I don't do math or statistics. I'm an English major. Incidentally, bragging point: There are less than 5 people in this country with my name. How cool is that?

3) Don't you think I would have been a lot more famous if I had been related to him? I'm not starving for fame and fortune, but I'm not stupid. I would at least have nicer stuff, maybe my own car, and a nice cushy internship in my chosen career field if I'd had strings to pull. But I don't. Which is why I'm here.

Now that aside, I have always enjoyed his music and I commend him for his work in the 1980's. He was an integral part of the merging of black and Caucasian cultural differences. And he revolutionized dancing forever. No one will ever forget his trademark moonwalk. So, Dear "Uncle-who's-not-really-my-uncle-because-we-share-nothing-but-a-last-name" Michael, rest in peace and may your post-mortal existence be better than this one. Because, let's be honest, this one kind of stank for you.

Oh, Engineers

"Here the Epydoc might be of little more help. I added sample of how to create the followerload from an lmm file. You may want to use the tags about this code snippet to emphasize that."

Um, what?

The quote that comes to mind is from Finding Nemo: "It's like he's trying to speak to me, I know it!"

Engineers may be brilliant, but they really are hopeless when it comes to transferring that brilliance to others. In some ways, they're almost a different species from the rest of us. Seriously. How many fast-food workers or authors do you know who get down on their hands and knees with a measuring tape and mark with tape exactly where the furniture should go so that A) it's centered and B) it is in the right position for optimal hearing and watching pleasure? Hand on my heart, I have watched my dad do this every time we move. You have no idea how tempted I've been to go and just scoot the couch a few inches to one side to see if he notices.

And then there's the tendency to fix everything, regardless of whether it's broken or not. Especially if it isn't broken. We have a huge hole behind our ground-floor toilet (apparently someone had to go just a little too badly... or.... something. Don't ask me how it got there) that's been on the "to fix" list for at least a year. Yet on my dad's day off, he decides to try to run an extended ethernet cord from the study to the family room, just so that, should the fancy strike him, he can plug my computer in and listen to my music on the "superior" sound system. For lack of anything to do, I end up helping him, and the whole process ends up taking us several hours and included three new holes in the wall (one of them unnecessary -- that bugged him SO much because he miscalculated the location of the hole and how big it needed to be).

All so that I could just sit on the couch, plug in my earphones, and listen to my music on my own. Hooray, Dad! He still has yet to benefit from my luscious music samples, and I don't think he's a fan of my kinds of music anyway. Never have I been so proud.

Now today, I talked to the guys I work for and explained (very clearly I thought) that I needed an explanation of some feature or other in the program we're developing so that I can document it. And I needed it in plain English. Then I get that little doosie of an explanation at the top. *headdesk* That, my friends, is not plain English. Oh right. I forgot who I was talking to.

Based on the stories above, it might be surprising to discover that engineers love to be efficient. They're obsessed with efficiency, actually. Even taking the time to measure furniture location makes sure that all the soundwaves bouncing around the room are absorbed most efficiently by human ears. And rerouting the ethernet cord would have been efficient had we decided to use my music collection as our primary source of listening material. This also extends to their word choices. A few examples:

"Gooey" -- it must have taken me at least a year of working for them to figure out what the heck they meant when they said this. Eventually I learned that it was what they called the Graphical User Interface (G.U.I). Aha. Gooey. Because just saying G-U-I was too long. You save one syllable if you say "gooey." Gooey it is, then. Makes it sound like it's going to drip out of the screen and attack you...

Everything is shortened, even if it's been shortened in the past. For example, one of the products is called LumbarSIM, which is short for LumbarSimulator. My boss called it LSim yesterday. What next? "Sim?" or, maybe to make it more unique, we'll call it "Lim." Start printing up the bumper stickers, boys, I think we have a winner.

They also tend to speak in code rather than bother with translating to normal speech. It's never "Make that a hyperlink to your formatting page," it's "Make sure you link href that to the css file." If you understand that, kudos to you. I only do because I've had it said to me too many times. Don't forget to ctrl+C and export that into your long-term memory under the h1

"Things to Remember When Talking to an Engineer."

BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Totally just typed h1 up there and it converted to the heading format. That's awesome. Oh man, it's taking over my life.

Don't get me wrong. I love engineers. Heck, I'll probably end up marrying one. But if anyone ever comes up to you and starts talking about a CAD system, all I can say is smile and nod politely and then never ever bring up computers or the word virtual around them ever again.

Californian Colloquialisms

Today, this 24th day of the 6th month of the year of our Lord 2009, I hereby christen thee Snarky Snippets and send thee on thy maiden voyage. Fare thee well.

Since this is my first post in the blogosphere, there are a few disclaimers I'd like to make.

Item 1: Since the title of this blog is *ahem* SNARKY Snippets, please expect some, if not all of the content herein to be biting and perhaps mildly insulting. However, pretty much anything is subject to my humor, so if your demographic appears to be singled out, just wait. It'll pass.

Item 2: For the protection of subjects of this blog, names will be withheld unless I have received permission to cite them. I bear the objects of my humor no ill will. This blog is strictly to point out the little quirks that make life more fun.

Now, down to business.

I recently took a road trip with several newly-made friends from California and after three days in their company, I started to pick up on some really funny colloquialisms. First up, one of the girls asked me what a colloquialism was (not because I said it, she just randomly asked me mid-trip after learning that I was an English major) and it got me thinking about them in general. After that, I started picking up on some funny things Californians say. Other people use them, too, but Californians seem to use it more, especially the coastal natives.

"Bomb" = they use this to describe just about everything that is cool. And no, they don't say "that movie is da bomb," like we assume it should be phrased. Instead, it's been converted from a noun into an adjective, as in "this cake is bomb" or "check out those bomb caves" Last time I checked, "bomb" was a noun for something that was about to explode and wreak havoc. Unless madness and mayhem is the new cool... who am I to say?

"Legit" = also used as a substitute for "cool." Frequently. Occasionally, the longer "legitimate" is used, but ironically, the state with the longest name (minus like, West Virginia) seems to like the shortest words. Funky. And I lied, California does not have the longest name, but it's long enough. Road trips from one end of the state to the other are long too, so my point still stands. You'd think size, population, and vocabulary would be proportionate...

"Rad" = no, this word did not die with the 70's. Thank goodness they don't say radical, but "rad" is bad enough. I had the strong temptation to laugh every time I heard someone say it.

"Toolin' around" = basically means loitering, or chilling, or messing around. But then why not just SAY that? Nope, it's TOOLIN' around. Which makes me think of TOOL, which is not a nice word for a player. Oh joy.

In addition to these colloquialisms, I also collected some other memorable sayings:

"The sheep are NAKED!" Um. I believe the correct term would be "recently sheared" (or shorn, depending on how much of a purist you are). Have you never watched Boundin'? Oh wait, they call him "nekked and bare." Aha. Problem identified.

"Holy crap! I didn't know that anyone HAD that many cows!" Yes. It's called a dairy farm. Or maybe even a beef farm. Or heck, maybe they just like cows. I collect them, you know.

"Cows are agriculture" Not by themselves they're not. Agriculture is the umbrella term for the raising of crops, livestock, and land-cultivation.

"What ARE these??" California, meet Mosquito. Just so you know, there're probably at least 7 million left in this block alone, let alone the rest of the city. Please note that crazed dancing often accompanied this exclamation. Which any Midwesterner would know is a completely futile exercise. Clothes not lathered in bug spray are also futile. I was proclaimed a genius by at least 5 people while I was coating them all thoroughly in bug spray, catching all the possible places a mosquito might get to.

"It's trying to sting me!" Actually, to put it graphically, that mosquito is attempting to EAT you, not just sting you. That pointy thing is its proboscis and it pokes it into your skin until it finds your blood, sticks its long tongue down through it and sucks it up while secreting a mild venom that initially numbs your skin to its presence and... yeah, you get the idea.

"I smacked one and its guts squished all over the place" Sorry hon, mosquitoes don't have guts. That was your blood. Or maybe even my blood. Or perhaps the blood of that guy you were checking out just now. You can't really know.

"That lizard is obese!" To which I actually DID say out loud: "That just makes him better to eat" and they gave me the funniest stare. I don't think they even realized that I was kidding. And I got a closer look at that lizard. He wasn't obese. It was just the kind of lizard it was. It's just a heck of a lot bigger that the scrawny little things we have in SoCal.

So there's some memorable quotes for you. They really are wonderful. I was also apparently a hit with my Achmed impersonation and my Meg Ryan voice. Apparently I did a little entertaining to pay them back for the volumes of entertainment they were giving me. :D

Thanks for the memories guys