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Everything You Always Wanted To Know About TXT*

*but were afraid to ask.

A co-worker disappears into the bathroom, yet their Facebook wall magically updates. A friend tells you she can’t make it to your party because she’s not feeling well, yet her Twitter post raves about the new sushi restaurant downtown. It’s getting harder and harder to tell lies, even little white lies, when you are ‘lifecasting’. It’s also getting a lot harder to hide. People are TXTing from their mobile phones from just about every mobile location. They are telling everyone exactly what they are doing. But are they really?

Employing the 10 Ideas in 10 Minutes technique, I came up with ten things to consider (or conversely block from your mind) when you receive a text message (or IM, or Tweet).

  1. Is this person driving a car? “Don’t Text and Drive!” will be the slogan for the next generation.
  2. Is this person crossing the street? If so, they’re about to get hit by the texter from #1.
  3. Is this person operating heavy machinery? I saw a road worker texting with one dirty, gloved hand through a clear plastic bag (to keep his phone clean). With his other hand he was distractedly pushing a giant, wet, screaming radial saw into hard concrete. We’ll see how long he has two hands.
  4. Is this person standing at a urinal, or sitting on a toilet seat? It’s not like the bathroom germs can be transported via satellite, but it’s still a bit too intimate and disturbing. I suppose it’s still more polite than talking on the phone, which I’ve witnessed in a few men’s bathrooms.
  5. Is this person drunk? Look for an increase in miss-spellings, as well as odd confessions , extra X’s and O’s, and <3’s.
  6. Is this person high? Look for sentences that aren’t completed, words replaced by numbers, and strange shortened versions of common words.
  7. Is this person getting lucky? If they are sexting you, that’s okay. But if they are conversing with you digitally while having sex with someone else, well that’s just wrong.
  8. Is this person eating? Don’t text with your mouth full.
  9. Is this person in a completely different emotional state than they are projecting? How tragic to be sending out little :-) when there might be tears streaming down his or her face.
  10. Is this person standing somewhere nearby, watching you? Does that sound creepy? Because that’s what people used to do before mobile phones: stand near each other, look at each other, and talk out loud.

This entry was written by jted, posted on May 25, 2009 at 11:15 pm, filed under 10 in 10, Never be bored™, Observations, Thoughts and tagged , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.



Act Like You’re Famous. Feel Like You’re Rich.

Having fame and fortune doesn’t mean anything by itself. You think you want it, but rarely think about why you want it. What will you be able to act like when you’re famous? What will you feel like when you are rich? If you focus more on these actions and feelings, perhaps you can benefit now instead of deferring your happiness waiting for an uncertain future. Here are some ideas to get you warmed up.

Act Like You’re Famous
How would a famous person approach socializing, commuting, chores, etc?

  1. When you go out in frumpy clothes you can pretend you are hiding from the paparazzi.
  2. Expect good service. If you were famous, you’d expect it naturally. But everyone should expect it.
  3. Wear dark glasses when you leave the house and don’t take them off. Ever.
  4. Pretend your maid or nanny is sick and you are just ’slumming it’ with the kids/pets.
  5. Act like your friends are really your ‘assistants’. Try asking them to carry things, take notes, or cut your food.
  6. Be important. Not an ass, but important. Talk to everybody politely. Talk to everyone like they work for you.
  7. Find things to be ‘quirky’ about— for instance maybe on Wednesdays you only eat food that is blue.
  8. Blurt out catch phrases like, “That’s so wizard” and give people knowing looks as if to say, “I started that meme.”
  9. Hide your face behind your hand, newspapers, etc whenever mobs of people go by. Especially young, good-looking people.
  10. Name drop in casual conversation. Say things like, “Jordan doesn’t like this kind of fish.” When people ask who Jordan is, say, “You know. Jordan.”

Feel Like You’re Rich
How would an independently wealthy person approach career, hobbies, relationships, and relaxation?

  1. Spend more time doing what you love to do. Is that so difficult?
  2. Stop worrying about your job. Pretend you do it because you love it, not because you are obligated.
  3. Don’t spend time worrying about your possessions. Pretend you can replace anything. Besides, you can’t take it with you.
  4. Say rich things like, “Money can’t buy you happiness, but it can buy you things that make you happy.”
  5. Say rich things like, “If you have to look at the price, you can’t afford it.”
  6. Wear a cheap suit because it’s ‘ironic’.
  7. Write a will where you leave $50,000,000 to your cat.
  8. Instead of being envious of people with luxury items like expensive cars or watches, practice feeling pity. Pretend you have exclusive, custom made, hand-crafted items that cannot be bought, and won’t exist for others until they go to auction after your death.
  9. Tell people that they are looking at the world’s first future trillionaire. Tell them that your accountant needs an accountant. Tell them that it costs you thirty-thousand, nine-hundred ninty-nine dollars and ninty-nine cents just to stoop down and pick up a penny.
  10. Buy stock— even if it’s just one stock. Then you can say you ‘own’ microsoft or apple or ibm. And it’ll be true!

If you take on some of these characteristics in your day-to-day life it does a few things: it injects some humour, it causes you to relax a bit, and it reminds you that so much of what we experience is a matter of perpective. Regardless of what materials you possess or who people percieve you to be, you can alter how you look at your own life. I’m not condoning delusion, but I am giving you permission to use your imagination again. When we were kids we pretended to be all the things we wanted to be. Why did we stop?

This entry was written by jted, posted on May 24, 2009 at 12:44 am, filed under 10 in 10, LifeFocus System, Thoughts and tagged , , , . Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.