November 2005

11.21.2005
COOL NEW PEOPLE
After years of avoiding it, I finally joined MySpace about a month ago. I always used to denigrate it as a lazy form of social prostitution and pretentious mingling with idiots and scenesters. "Oh, hey, I saw you listed the Shins as one of your favourite bands!" Little did I know that this perceived weakness was, all along, its greatest strength!

Well, its second greatest strength. Pretenstitution takes a back seat to MySpace's hands-down finest feature: COOL NEW PEOPLE. Like a banner ad, three newly signed-up users are displayed, seemingly randomly, on every page to get them a few friends as they're starting out. But as it turns out, there is nothing random about it. Every now and then, some hapless newbie will wind up in massive rotation, appearing repeatedly on Cool New People until everyone on MySpace has seen them and requested them as a friend.

I was one such Cool New Person. People I actually know in real life reported seeing my face pop up time and again. I even appeared under my own Cool New People section! In a span of maybe five days, I received over 2,000 friend requests and countless messages from people saying things like, "Oh you like the Beatles too!!" Great. Fortunately, I did it right. I took my time. Over the next couple of weeks, I accepted only the most attractive 10% of female requesters and the coolest 1% of male requesters. To attempt to re-create the experience, here are a few of my favourite messages...

• "Your profile pic reminded me of the ocean-- which reminds me of summer and vacation-- which made me happy, which i need becasue i just lost everything in a big nasty flood-- SO-- can I be friends with you? I'm sure you have lots of qualities I would also enjoy besides ability to take a good pic but at this moment-- i would just like to enjoy your pretty blue backround..."
  
  
• "hey, no offense, but i dont like your name. im sure ur a great guy but my birth father was named geoff so it freaks me out a little because of some stuff he used to do. love u anywayz!!"
  
  
• "am anita,am from nigeria and will like to make friend wit u.....so that i can share my tought and my view wit u...i will be glad to hear from you as soon as you get this message...."
  
  
• "hi there, can u add meh? im ian from the philippines.here's my add, yannah_be@yahoo.com. please.... thanks... "
  
  
• "look at my pics, cool hat, can i borrow it? no. i know huh goodbye "
  
  
• "hey geoff this is adam from sixth grade... remember me. sorry i dont have a real pic of me but it is me. w/b" [editor's note: there was no one named Adam in my sixth grade class]
  
  
• "hey just wantes to tell you that ur damn cutee... lol although i know im not the only one that has said that to you.. ur probably used to it.." [editor's note: yes, i am]
  
  
• "yoh! that's a cool picture... no, this is not a gay advance... i just like cool pictures. be cool, cousin... samax. www.samaxAmen.com"
  
  
• "I saw your profile and instantly thought of my friend michelle. I think you guys would be quite a pair. She loves to bake, and she makes fabulous dinners. She also brews her own beers. She's 20 years old. She is the one in the picture with me. with the reddish blonde hair. Wanna give it a go?"
  
  
• "I think it's time I say hi and hello to you since I feel like I already know you. You've popped up on my COOL NEW PEOPLE list about half-dozen times today. You're in massive circulation!"
  
  
• "how big is tempe? you know hank?" [editor's note: this one's my favourite]
  
  
• "I like your pics. Did you have fun in San Francisco? My daddy lives there. I heard on the news this morning, someone threw some children in the bay. What the hell. That's messed up. Your body can only survive for like 3 minutes in the bay." [editor's note: nevermind, this one's my favourite]

Likewise, my brain can only survive for like three minutes on MySpace. Three beautiful, delicious minutes - now that's what I call C.N.P.! So go ahead, sign up, get lucky, wind up in massive circulation. We dare you.

11.18.2005
Two Sad Stories
Sad Episode I: Our favourite Saskatchewan-native turned Phoenix-resident, Leslie Neilsen, is back in business again. Unfortunately, he is now doing local television commercials for the Arizona Savings and Credit Union.

The second-hardest working man in show business appears on camera, wearing a graduation gown, and announces, "I have just graduated from Computer U and now I know all about URL and JPEG!" He then proceeds to drop his laptop on the ground, exclaiming, "My computer crashed!" I can't for the life of me recall the relevance to banking.

This tale has a particularly sad ending, as I have an acquaintance who knows Leslie Nielsen's phone number, but won't give it to me - even though Naked Gun brought me joy when I was in the hospital and I just want to thank him!

Sad Episode II: I was driving home from work last night on the US-60, and my car ran out of gas. But it's not my fault! The gas gauge clearly indicated that I had at least 1/10 of a tank remaining! I think it's broken.

Nonetheless, it was out, and I was stuck, standing on the side of the freeway half a mile before the Rural Road exit. One gas can, fifty minutes, and numerous tow-truck cancellation calls later, I was back on the road, be-bopping my way to class.

This sad story ends on a happy note, however, as I made it to school in the nick of time, aced my test, got out of class forty minutes early, and drank beer for a couple hours. The end.

11.07.2005
¡Viva la Vida Mexicana!
I was in Mexico City last week, and put some photos from the trip online. I stayed with Clare and Solomon, who are now teaching English to Mexicans around town and were kind enough to put me up for a few days. It is a bizarre, frantic, and beautiful city with a suprising amount to see and do, and an unsurprising lack of laws. And an unsurprising load of pollution, which was bad enough to incite a week-long allergy attack.

The day I got there, I was tired from travelling, so the three of us had a nice dinner, then Clare and I went the movies and saw Fever Pitch / Amor en Fuego. Interestingly, Mexicans talk in the theater throughout movies.

The next day, November 2, was Dia de los Muertos / Day of the Dead. In the morning and afternoon, Clare and I went to Chapultepec Park, visiting the Castle, the history museum, and the world-famous museum of anthropology. At said museo famoso, Clare almost got thrown out by a corrupt security guard, because I convinced her to go into this neat-o fountain for some photo-ops. El corrupto eventually decided to just make her "sit in the sun for 10 minutes to dry off" and we were allowed to stay.

That night, we went to a Dia de los Muertos festival in the Coyoacan neighborhood. The locals turned out in force to create a seething mass of humanity that swarmed the altars memorializing dead family members. Its really a bizarre holiday, combining joy and death into a huge regalia. Additionally, Mexicans are very confused about Halloween. From October 31 - November 4 they dress in costume and walk around the city streets, asking for you to put money into their plastic pumpkins and sacks.

November 3, Clare and I took a bus to the pyramids of Teotihuacan, 30 miles from the city. The combined cost of bus fare and entrance into the ruins was all of $2.50. ¡Increible! Teotihuacan is an ancient city that once housed 200,000 people among its 600 pyramids. We climbed to the top of the second tallest pyramid in the western hemisphere - it is as tall as a 25-story building. The only pyramid larger is the Great Pyramid of Cholula, also in Mexico, which is the also the largest in the world (one-third larger than the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt).

That night, Clare and I went out bar-hopping in a really nice neighborhood reminiscient of Greenwich Village. We had become sufficiently drunk when the time came to go to an ATM for more cash. So, we found an ATM, which, in Mexico City, are located in small rooms in front of banks to keep them off the streets. I withdrew my money and Clare grabbed my receipt, pointed out that it had my debit card number on it, and lit it on fire. Then she threw it away in the trash can full of little receipts, which quickly began to flare up. She yells, "run," and takes off out of the bank. I grabbed the can, brought it out onto the sidewalk, and took off after her. Well down the street, we could still see it torching up. We were playing with power. Super power.

The next day we went to the Zocalo and saw the Metropolitan Cathedral, built in the 1500s. Then we went to an art museum and saw some Diego Rivera murals, but I started feeling sick from wolfing down all these street tacos earlier. Dr Simi's knock-off Immodium saved the day and Clare and I took a bus tour around central Mexico City on the Turibus. It was great. That night we went to a concert featuring a bunch of local bands, among which Clare and Solomon knew a handful of people. It was actually really good music.

To wrap a long story up, the next morning we woke, lunched, walked around a park, and I headed off to the airport. Mexico City is a bizarre place... its very third world, but there are still some really nice parts and trendy places to go out. No one there really seems to care about anything, be it laws or money or world news. I'm not sure if that's good or bad. It is beautiful and simple and polluted and hectic, all together, and it made for an excellent vacation.