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By Keith, January 30, 2010 1:19 pm

I haven’t anything to say to the world today.  The world seems to have little interest in hearing opinions based on observable facts and logic.  The world wants ambiguous statements of truth, wholly untestable and unassailable slogans, and tautologies.  This blogger is fresh out of those.

These terror filled days run on dogma, urban myth, and conspiracy theory.  Big pharma and those fat-cat Wall Street bankers threaten our very way of life with their gay marriage and abortion mongering.  Thank god we have our patriotic Supreme Court to step into the breach to defend the good name of corporate interests in these times of crisis and uncertainty.  Our government truly is our steadfast, unwavering bastion of truth, freedom, and the common good.

Amen.

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By Keith, January 29, 2010 8:55 pm

For the most part, friends are great.  (I am Keith’s limiting statement.)  Yes, friends are wonderful, but they are not all the same.  Does that mean that BFF’s are better than casual Facebook acquaintances?  Sure does, but that’s not what I’m writing about.

This post is about what friendship means to me.  There are lots of sappy sickly sweet greeting cards (I am Keith’s gag reflex) that yammer on about friendship in obscenely lofty language.  This will not be that.  Friendship is too subtle for such heavy handed treatment.

I say that friendship is subtle because we sometimes find ourselves becoming friends with people without intending to.  We work with a person long enough or spend time in classes or playing sports with them, or we game with them online, and before we realize it, we feel comfortable around this person.  We let our guard down, begin to trust, and before we know it. BAM! New friend.

It’s not only trust that makes someone a friend.  For me to befriend someone, it also requires high levels of honesty, comfort, sharing, empathy, forgiveness, and common interests.  All of these ingredients in varying amounts seem to determine the value of someone’s friendship. The weight we give to each ingredient is, of course, different from person to person and completely subjective.

We are not all the same. Certainly all of us look for specific traits whether or not we are aware of it. Take honestly for instance. I’d wager that someone like Dick Cheney might value loyalty far more than honestly. So much that he can remain friends with someone who would lie to protect him. Not all of our friends have the same trains in all of the same combinations.

Where am I going with this? I’m stating my recent reevaluation of my what the word “friend” now means to me. In doing so, I pay no mind to the dictionary’s treatment of it.  I’m ignoring my inner cynicism and expanding my ideas about it’s meaning. Here we go…

HONESTY
Above all other things, honesty in all things is paramount to me.  I would rather hear the ugliest of truths than the most beautiful falsehood. When we lie to people (including ourselves) we disrespect and devalue them. Lying, even a white lie, is a degradation. My friends should always interact with me honestly and should expect the same in return.

TRUST
We all need to trust others on occasion, and I don’t believe you can have friends without trust. People who divulge personal information entrusted to them are not my friends or won’t be for long. I’ve heard gossips say in their defense that the person shouldn’t have told them the information if they didn’t want anyone else to know. I don’t accept such bullocks, and I don’t treat my friends with such contempt and disrespect. Your friends are not your information sources.

COMFORT
My comfort level when in the presence of another person is a strong influence on the level of friendship I’ll have with someone. If you’re a person who says or does things that make me feel uncomfortable, we probably will never achieve BFF status.  If you don’t know (but do care) if you make your friends uncomfortable, maybe you should ask them for an honest answer.

SHARING
I value sharing with friends, but I don’t mean “sharing” in the material sense. I don’t want for things from my friends. I desire a sharing of ideas, thoughts, opinions, and the like. Sharing time is certainly nice too. Friends of mine should feel free to speak their mind, agree, disagree, or remain indifferent, secure in the belief that sharing such things strengthens our friendship. Even if we disagree, we’ll at least gain insight of each other’s thought process.

EMPATHY/COMPASSION
Empathy and compassion are just manly ways to say “love” or “caring” about each other. Even someone as emotionally stunted reserved as me must admit to caring/loving empathizing with or having compassion for his friends at least a little bit. The truth is that it’s a lot, but I choose not to wear it on my sleeve. Friends should show that they care about each other. My way to do this often involves doing technical tasks for or giving help and my time (which is extremely valuable to me) to those I care for.  Tech support counts!  Along with my love/caring empathy and compassion goes understanding.  I do my best to understand and empathize with my friends. I hope they will reciprocate, but I know it’s not always easy.

FORGIVENESS
Without exception, every one of us makes mistakes. Friends will forgive you. There are limits to forgiveness, of course, but when you recognize that a friend is truly sorry, forgive them and move on.   Life is far too short for holding onto +10 grudges of destructive unhappiness.

SHARED INTERESTS
There seems to be a strong correlation between having shared interests and friendship. Frequently people meet through and bond over those interests they have in common. Such is the case with he friends I have online. Although I’ve never met some of them offline, they are real friends nonetheless.

As someone with very few close friends in the offline world, I can attest that it takes relatively little effort to make friends online.   However, once a friend is made, the effort is well invested in keeping and improving friendships with those you hold most dear, online or offline.  (I am Keith’s post-blog regret.)

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By Keith, January 28, 2010 11:14 pm

Although my overly simplistic posts make blogging seem like child’s play, I assure you that it aint!  “What’s so difficult about hurriedly typing a bunch of incomplete non sequiturs?” (I hear) you ask (in my head).  “You don’t even utilize the amazing semicolon or proofread, so what could possibly make bloggering hard, Mr. Obvious?”

For one, I sometimes have extremely interesting conversations with friends, but blogging out the ideas from those discussions could (further) offend the person on the other end of that argument.  Did I say “argument?”  I meant “friendly disagreement.”  I don’t want anyone to read my post as being directed at them, so I usually stay silent under those circumstances.  (Maybe tomorrow I’ll write a post about my least favorite phrase, and the post WILL NOT be directed AT Paul!)

Because many people who read my blog know me offline, I tend to shy away from issues that might tend to: 1. offend them, 2. make them (further) question my sanity, 3. think that I’m depressed and/or might do harm to myself.  There’s a lot to be said for blogging anonymously.  Knowing how I feel most days, don’t be surprised if some morning you pop onto Think Obvious expecting to read something frivolous only to involuntarily spit coffee all over the screen in reaction to something dark(ly), humorless(ous), or offensive.  Some days I’m a race car and the world has me in the red, but some day soon I’ll be a mushroom cloud layin’ monkey farmer (expletive replaced; will use to split atom).

My life is simple.  I’m free of most of the complications weighing most people down.  People with baggage probably don’t want that thrown in their face every day.  At some point, everyone will resent living vicariously and either: 1. free themselves, 2. lash out at or shoot down the high flier, or 3. passive-aggressively slink away from their computer to scream at their kids/spouse/pet (choose 2).

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By Keith, January 26, 2010 8:46 am

Do you know what the average distance between Earth and its moon is?  Apparently neither did I.  My Mouth thought 50,000; that seemed right.  My brain heard that number and stepped in to “correct” it, 40,000 or less (also wrong).  That’s just one of the ignorant things I said recently on Germanglish Podcast.

Podcasting, does anyone even like that word?  Half of the people I know weren’t even aware that podcasts existed until I explained it to them.  From a breakdown of the word, they could easily have thought, “What’s a pod, and do you cast it like a fly rod or what?”

A year ago when I (all too abruptly) quit the Critical Strike Podcast, I honestly thought my days of recording conversations with friends were over.  That’s all a podcast (when I do it) really is, just a recording of an interesting conversation between people who (hopefully) have something worthwhile to say.  I didn’t realize when I quit that I would miss it as much as I have.  I suppose it was only a matter of time before I got back into it.

Germanglish Podcast is a brand new project that my German nephew (Nik) and I are working on, but it’s definitely not work.  Though we’ve only recorded one episode, we enjoyed it immensely.  My hope is that if we are enjoying our discussions, listeners will find them entertaining as well.  WARNING: Germanglish Podcast is NOT for everyone.  Nik and I share a sarcastic sense of humor that not everyone will appreciate.  The podcast will likely contain mild profanity, hopefully not too much for most listeners.  Neither of us swear frequently, but sometimes, stronger words are necessary to affect the emphasis intended.

Why should anyone listen to Germanglish Podcast?  I really don’t have a good answer to this, but by listening to Germanglish Podcast, you might pick up a couple of good movie, music, video game, or TV show recommendations.  We don’t do full blown reviews of media, but near the end of each episode, we’ll each recommend some specific piece of media that we enjoyed.  If you like consuming media as much as we do, you’ll probably like our picks.

How can you listen?  Excellent question!  Even if you don’t have one of those new-fangled music pod thingers, you can listen to Germanglish Podcast right there on the website.  HERE’S A LINK! If you do use an iPod and/or use iTunes to listen to .mp3’s, you can subscribe to Germanglish through the iTunes Store (it’s free!).  When you go to the Germanglish website, check out the subscription links on the right, near the top of the page.

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By Keith, January 25, 2010 5:56 pm

Thanks to my brother, his multimeter, and my car battery’s black magic eye, I’ll soon be able to put this whole dying battery saga behind me.  No longer am I suffering under the delusion that my Honda Civic is a supercar impervious to the wear and tear associated with age and normal use.  Its battery is dying and along with it the part of me that thought it was better than all others.

To say that a part of me is dying might be an overstatement.  I’m just a little disappointed that my barely 3 year old car is beginning to break down.  My 2007 Civic only has about 16,000 miles on it.  I suppose the number of miles has nothing to do with the life of its battery, but it doesn’t stop me from thinking of things that had I done differently, might have extended the life of my car’s battery.  What if I would have driven to work more often?  What if I wouldn’t have sat in the parking lot with the engine off listening to music before work when I did drive?  What if my commute was longer than 5 minutes each way?

I’ll drive or walk to Auto Zone sometime this week.  My brother is going to help me install it.  I probably could do it myself, but I’d really rather have someone there with me in case I totally mess something up or electrocute myself.  I can imagine looking down at my limp corpse lying on the garage floor as my spirit hovers over it for days and days before anyone notices the funny smell.  Just kidding.  I don’t really believe in the whole out-of-body near-death experience nonsense.  I don’t want to break anything, and my brother is much more mechanically inclined than I am.  He’ll know what to do when I break something.