Facebook

Facebook, in its great wisdom, requires that members first establish actual personal communication with other members before being awarded privileged access to member profiles. Until the step of requesting or confirming friendship is taken, facebook members will have only four options for interaction with those whom are not officially befriended. The options are as follows:

1) Send message.
2) Poke him/her!
3) View friends.
4) Add to friends

If there are to be only four options, then three of these options make good sense. By sending messages and viewing friends (options 1 and 2) one may learn more about the party being considered for facebook-friendship before before proceeding to option 4 and adding them as friends with access to your full profile.

It is unclear what "Poke" is supposed to mean, though. Images of the Pillsbury Doughboy come to mind. At the very best, it is a poor choice of word. Why then, is poking given such a place of honor by the administration of facebook? They emphasize the poke option with an exclamation point. "Poke (your friend's fiance)!". Facebook seems to be arguing that given your four available choices, the poke is the most recommendable.

Considering that the poke's mere existence is puzzling, why is it one of the only actions allowed to be made between facebook non-friends? If someone is uncomfortable having another view such information as their relationship status and birth date, would it not follow that a poke! would come as unwelcome? "I met this unsavory person yesterday, and now they want to be facebook friends with me. I don't think I'll let them... Oh wait! I just got poked! That really changes things".

To these, and all questions about poking, facebook's official explanation must suffice: "A poke is a way to interact with your friends on Facebook. When we created the poke, we thought it would be cool to have a feature without any specific purpose. People interpret the poke in many different ways, and we encourage you to come up with your own meanings".

Christmas Shopping

I'll take three.

I wanna Transformer for Christmas!

Fact: Robots sell. Pictured to the right is the "Transformers" merchandise section of an otherwise well-stocked Target toy department. A lot of empty racks to be seen. There are plenty of "Pirates of the Caribbean" figurines if you need any, but the problem with those is that they have nothing to do with robots, and are therefore not nearly as cool.

Movie Review of the Week: "I Am Legend"

One of the nice things about Christmas is that we get to spend time with loved ones we don't often see. The hours with them always seem to fly by like minutes as stories are shared and lost time together is made up for. After a while though, the conversation does eventually slow, and loved ones start dropping off; some disappear to the bathroom, while others begin to snoop around the host loved one's kitchen for snacks. The TV inevitably goes on and people enter into the early stages of napping.

Precious holiday moments intended to be savored with loved ones are suddenly threatening to diminish into boredom, naps and TV. This is when the host should suggest that everyone go out to see a movie.

The question now becomes, "Which movie to see?". To which, the answer is, "Huh?". And the question is now rephrased more properly, "What movie should we go see?". To help answer this question, I have screened a movie for review.

The movie is "I Am Legend". It has been quite a winner at the box office and when you think about it, this should be no surprise because "I Am Legend" combines two crucial ingredients for quality cinema:

A: Will Smith

B: A professional acting German Shepherd

The premise of the movie is that a virus swept the earth and turned 90% of the population into what I will call rabid zombies. The zombies' favorite pastime is attacking the remaining 10%. Will Smith is immune to the virus, and suspects that he is the only one left on earth after years of zombie attacks. He fills his days searching for survivors and also attempting to develop a cure to zombie rabies. Disappointingly, at no point does he consider organizing a 5k Fun Run for zombie rabies awareness.

This is a violent, suspenseful movie, so do not attend if you are expecting a heart-warming holiday classic for the whole family. I myself was reeled in by the promising trailer for "I Am Legend" in which viewers are flashed an image of a German Shepherd running alongside Will Smith on a treadmill. Intriguing behavior from a German Shepherd; if the dog can run on a treadmill, they could certainly train it to accompany Will Smith rapping during the closing credits, and so it is safe to say that the preview left me wanting more.

"I Am Legend" doesn't disappoint, with regards to canine content. The German Shepherd "Sam", played by "Abbey", has a key role in this one, and is magnificent. She has earned herself a "Best Actress" nomination this year, or at least some Beggin' Strips or Pupperoni.

This may seem premature, but my review is drawing near an end. Most of my notes from the movie pertain to Sam, I'm afraid. Seems I was a little preoccupied with the fact that there was a doggy onscreen, and a lot of the finer points of the film may have escaped me. As best as I can recall, "I Am Legend" was a pretty good movie though, dog or no dog. I give it two stars.

"The cow and the bear shall be neighbors"

(Isaiah 11:7)

Regarding Shorts and the NBA

In America today, football has reached such a height of popularity that faithful allegiance to an NFL franchise is perceived as not only normal, but almost a virtue which one might brag about. It is no longer just "OK" to spend a couple hours watching football on Sunday, rather it may be something expected of a normal, healthy adult. In contrast, the NBA fan is treated with a reaction of polite curiosity, such as might be given to a pronounced model railroading enthusiast.

These are hard times for the NBA. It has many objectionable attributes that turn normal people away and continuously discourage their return. And so today, when a league very close to my heart is in the midst of the blackest of times, it seems appropriate to take a moment and try to say something nice about the NBA. Like, for example, think of what shorts would be like today in a world where the NBA never happened. Go find some family photography from 1991, and you will get to remember what your uncle's bare upper thighs looked like. The truth isn't pretty, but fortunately sometime roughly during the early nineties basketball players started wearing baggy shorts. You should be able to remember that during that time you were sitting on the couch, wearing what could be described as Daisy Dukes by today's standards, and rooting against the unruly Michigan Wolverines and their baggy trousers. Fact is, people from all walks of life wore short-shorts all the time back then, and thought nothing of it. Eventually, somebody from the NBA was to come along and suggest a better way; the world would change for the better.

Right now you might be saying, "George, the Michigan Wolverines were not in the NBA", which is an excellent point. The "Fab Five" Michigan recruiting class may be suggested by some to have invented baggy shorts. I do not hold this to be the case. The Wolverines were responsible for mainstreaming the concept in collegiate basketball, but they introduced a trend existing previously elsewhere and were not the first to wear baggy shorts. If credit must be given to the Wolverines, it arguably goes to their assistant coach Brian Dutcher, an unsung hero who made the courageous decision to lengthen the shorts. It was a shrewd maneuver to appease the prized freshmen, at the expense of the disapproval of many in the public. According to Fab Five historian Mitch Albom, the following conversation took place between Dutcher and the team's equipment manager:

"Hey, Bob. When you order this year's uniforms, get an extra four inches on the shorts, OK?"

"An extra four inches?"

"Yeah."

"On the shorts?"

"Right."

"If you say so."

As much trouble as this would bring to the team, the players had already recognized that baggy shorts are superior to short shorts, and were merely happy to be emulating a man who had blazed the path before them - that man is, of course, Michael Jordan.

Yes, from my research, I conclude that if any lone figure in history may be credited with the success of the shorts revolution of the early nineties, it has to be Michael Jordan, and he gained that credit while in the NBA. He never would have needed to don the baggy shorts when he was in college, because it was not until the pros that he wanted baggier shorts to fit over his favorite North Carolina college shorts. This is confirmed in Micheal Jordan and Bugs Bunny's cinematic triumph, "Space Jam", as follows:

Scene: [Michael Jordan needs someone to get his basketball gear]

Michael Jordan: Don't forget my North Carolina shorts.

Daffy Duck: Your shorts? From college?

Michael Jordan: I wore them under my Chicago Bulls uniform every game.

Looney Toones characters in unison: Eeewwww!

Michael Jordan: I washed them after every game!

Looney Toones characters in unison: Yeah, okay.

Michael Jordan: I did!

Michael wore baggy shorts - in the NBA - and was the first to do so. I guess that's my point. Thus concludes my term paper about shorts. Anyone out there who is struggling through final semester exams, feel free to print this off and hand it in. Just add your name, and a title, like "On the Nature of Shorts".