Seven years ago, I adventured to Japan with a friend – it was the summer after high school. We spent a month there, backpacking, hosteling, and gawking. I recently came across what my 18-year-old self wrote about the journey. I only started keeping journal entries near the end of the trip (we left at the beginning of July… seven years ago tomorrow, in fact). Yes, I was a typical dumbass teenage J.D. Salinger fan at the time, but there were other influences, too. This is moderately embarrassing, but here it is, as I wrote it then:

Thursday, July 24, 2003

I’m in Japan.

The subways here are crowded as hell, and I can’t breath right while I’m on them. Probably because I’m breathing in everyone else’s crappy pre-used air. I think old ladies are the worst on subway trains, they always try to push their way to the center of the car, rather than standing by the door. And they grin at you like damn hyenas while they do it. That reminds me, hyenas are members of the Hyaenidae family.

An old women was digging around in a trash can at a station a while back. She took out a piece of paper and set it inside a train, then she came back and started talking to me about my can. I was holding a can of soda at the time. I think she wanted the can, but I wasn’t done drinking the soda yet. It was called “Lemon Squash.” Maybe she liked that drink too. Anyway, after that she jumped over the tracks and ran into the forest. We never saw that crazy old lady again.

Japan really is a great country though. Really old guys help us a lot. Like if we’re lost, they’ll give us directions, even if we don’t ask. And there are a lot of interesting things to see, you know, shrines and temples and all that. The temples are all really huge, massive things, with these crazy sculptures and gold swirls all over the place. Not as modest as I thought Buddhists would be. And they always have touristy gift shops all over the place, real lame stuff. The only good things are the little wooden charms, I don’t know what they say, but I’m sure it’s something lucky. It better be, because I bought a ton of them.

I should go now, we’ve got to get up and go to Hakone tomorrow to see Mt. Fuji. I think I’ll find a big crater and live in it. I’ll build a house, and I’ll get a really loyal dog. And if any tourists stumble upon my abode, my dog’ll scare em off. Man, I’ll love that dog, until he gets rabies.

Friday, July 25, 2003

Today we went to Hakone to get a good view of Mt. Fuji, and do all that crater house business I told you about. The train ride was long, but an exhilarating spider attack made it more interesting. See, what happened is, this spider started spiraling downward toward Riffington M. (my traveling companion), so I had to jump in and kill it before it could inject its vile poison into his neck. We couldn’t find its corpse, but I probably just ate it and forgot.

We came to this crazy town with parks that cost 500 yen to enter and only have crappy fountains. So I just grabbed a sandwich (that spider wasn’t so filling) and some more dough from an ATM and we headed up the mountain on this crazy tram.

We couldn’t see anything as we went up, on account of the fog. It was foggy a hell, and we couldn’t even see Mt. Fuji. I thought it would be nice to live on that tram, going up and down the mountain every day. And no one would make you leave, because you’re just that kind of guy that everyone wants around. But one day, you’d just leave, without saying a word, and everyone would feel like something really meaningful happened.

Once we got up there, we could hardly see where we were going, once again, on account of the fog. But we found this crazy trail that wound around all over the place, and these birds that kept singing classical music at us. There were vents in the ground spewing out sulfur and whatnot, and they reminded me of teapots, although the air smelled like rotten eggs. It wasn’t so bad though.

Late in the afternoon, we decided to take the train back down the mountain. The conductors were really great, because the train kept having to switch directions (it was going down a mountain and all), and they’d have to get out and switch places every time. And every time they did, they said something to each other and laughed. I don’t know what they said, but I bet it was pretty funny, because they did it the whole way down. I think I’d like to be a conductor, just so I can find out what the joke is.

Saturday, July 26, 2003

Today we went to Asakusa. What a crazy place! More shoe stores than you’ll ever see. And this one temple there was great, I got my fortune:

No.98 BAD FORTUNE

It is hard to unravel an entangled thread.
Oppressed with sorrow, you can’t tell whether it is right or not.
You find yourself in hard, awkward circumstance like being caught in a fishing net.
Even though you may have a lot of trouble and sorrow, everything will be all right if you are patient and have faith in Buddhism.

*Your wish will not come true. *The sick person is hopeless. *The lost article will not be found. *The person you are waiting for will not come. *Building a new house and removal are both bad. *It is bad to make a trip. *Neither marriage nor employment is bad.

After that we went to Ueno, great old Ueno, our ol’ buddy Ueno. Ueno really is an excellent place, the station isn’t all gray and dark like some places, and it has that big park, called Ueno Park, naturally, which has a zoo with monkeys in it, a big shopping area, and this one time there was some sort of summer festival going on, with drums and dancing and all. There’s always something going on in crazy old Ueno.

After a while of wandering around Ueno, getting a little lost, and looking at hat stores, we decided to go home. On the train back, I was coming up with a plot for a movie. So, here’s what would happen, this guy, let’s say Rich, because that’s a grand name, Richard Richy Rich, right, so this Rich guy is living in this real isolated place, and he hasn’t seen anyone in years. But one day he decides to go into town, he just does, he doesn’t know why. And on his way he walks past this other guy, lets call him “Alien Snack #1″, so this other guy, AS1, has been living in the city his whole life, and he can’t take it anymore, he’s going crazy, and now he’s trying to find a place far away from civilization to rest his nerves. But, he and Rich never talk, so the people watching the movie won’t know all that stuff about AS1, it’s just there so the actor knows how to play the part.

Anyway, Rich finally makes it to town, and he sits down at a diner (they always have diners in movies) and orders a coffee. It comes out kind of funny, because he hasn’t spoken to anyone in years, right, but he gets his coffee anyway. So he’s drinking the coffee, and kind of glancing over a newspaper, but suddenly he realizes that he doesn’t feel so well, and he just falls off his stool right there, and dies. Turns out he accidentally ordered poison.

Sunday, July 27, 2003

Today we went to this crazy book street (they have streets for everything in Japan), and we looked for some English bookstores. We found one, but the people there looked at me funny, so we left. Then we went to Ueno and looked at a different kind of bookstore… it had girls peeing on themselves and it made me unsure of myself. One little kid almost wandered into it, and man would he have come out really confused if he had.

We spent a while searching for this arcade that we went to yesterday, and, after a lot of walking around and listening to guys yell, “IRASHAIMASEEEEEE!!!!,” we found it, and I won a Lupin III lighter from one of those crazy crane games. First try, no kidding. Then we said bye to good ol’ Ueno and headed back. So, we didn’t really do much today, I guess that’s partially because we spent most of our time sitting on trains headed in the wrong direction.

Man, I had this dream last night, it was crazy as hell. Can’t remember a damn thing about it though, except that it was crazy. I think I was in a parking garage for a while. Man, I hope I have more crazy dreams tonight.

Monday, July 28, 2003

Besides being able to traverse the great oceans, soar fearlessly above the clouds, and defy all the forces that would stand against it, our plane’ll have little screens on every seat, so we can watch movies. That is, the plane that’s taking us home tomorrow will. We’ve been here since the 2nd, so It’ll be good return to that place where people speak English and don’t think you’re weird if you don’t make crazy slurping noises when you eat.

I think it can time travel, too.

The best part about traveling in airplanes is that few seconds after you take off, and again before you land, when the cars look like Micro Machines, and the houses like Monopoly houses. I wish I had a giant foot ready to kick over the stupid plastic houses and toy cars. Then Mom would yell at you, and you’d have to put everything back in its box. It would be a giant mom, of course.

“People, not machines, made the Renaissance.” – Jaron Lanier, You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto

Web content is increasingly being designed to appeal to machines. The more machine-oriented content becomes, the less human-oriented it becomes; the focuses are inversely related. This progression is not sustainable indefinitely – it must slow. If it doesn’t, search engines and aggregators will become meaningless, because the human-oriented content they were meant to collect will be overwhelmed by machine-optimized slop.

SEO specialists are busy ensuring that text is easily readable by Google, not by humans. SEM specialists are ensuring that content is chunked into small pieces which are easily categorized and quickly consumed. This increases their appeal to crowd-sourced aggregators (Digg, Reddit) and aids their viral progression through sites like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.

A new brand of content-providing website is being built specifically to capitalize on aggregation hiveminds. These sites host primarily non-original images and videos, short, superficial blurbs of text, lists, and other easy-to-describe chunks of content. Sites which still produce new content are adjusting their strategies to appeal to these aggregation and search machines as well, and their original content is becoming indistinguishable from amateur content, recycled content, and iterative “memes.”

Advertisers (with Google and Facebook’s help) are increasingly using this hive as data for algorithms which better target advertising. For content-producing websites, readers become data which is used to optimize content to increase net page views and sell ads. But humans are not data, and treating them as data will cause them to resent you.

The following is a preliminary, only-just-formed (though wordy!) segment of my thoughts about where the internet will head in the next five years, give or take. It is heavily, but not entirely, extrapolated from ideas Jaron Lanier has expressed, especially in his recent manifesto, which I’ve quoted.

Note: I’ll add here that I’m very conscious of the fact that early ideas and speculation are often missing vital pieces – I don’t claim to be a soothsayer, and I don’t mean to imply that I hate the internet. I don’t criticize out of spite.

One possible outcome of all this

Content aggregators, and sites designed to feed them will grow and multiply until they reach maximum capacity, at which point they will shrink and plateau.

New technologies, such as tablets and HTML 5, and the resulting trend toward “apps,” will promote human-oriented content, and consumer-to-creator transactions. The public will reject homogenizing forces like Facebook, and they will also shrink (though they will remain relevant until the next big people connectors emerge, in whatever form they take).

Providers of new, high-quality content will be rewarded, and recyclers of the old will be ignored. Sexy, human-oriented websites and applications will be favored over ugly, search-engine-optimized offerings.

And a middle ground…

Only it won’t all happen at the same time, or at the same pace. The internet is volatile – it’s a seething ocean of minds, and it fluctuates accordingly. It’s unlikely that the internet will change quite as radically as described above in the foreseeable future – more likely for the next five years is a middle ground between the extremities, with some unexpected twists and jolts in each direction.

The “machine-optimized slop” I referred to will maintain a healthy hold as long as CPM ads are still paying. Higher quality content will be collected, organized and distributed by companies like Google and Apple (the recently announced Chrome Web Store is exactly this), and segments of internet users will reject in full and in part the ways of Web 2.0, and reduce the number of separate bits of content they consume daily while increasing the weight and quality of the content they do consume. The latest popular links will sometimes be rejected in favor of a full issue of National Geographic.

This is evidenced in current trends

I pay $15 a month for Netflix. I subscribe because I like their selection of streaming movies and TV shows, and I’m willing to pay for it. So are a lot of other people. I’m also willing to pay for certain applications on my phone, and perhaps I will purchase apps and games I like from the coming Chrome Web Store.

I am also willing to pay for editorial content – sometimes I pick up a physical newspaper or magazine. I feel better about paying for journalism if I have something to hold, but eventually inexpensive tablets will give me a psychological middle ground – a physical object which stores data I’ve paid for. I wouldn’t  mind a subscription to a high-quality digital magazine, if it were priced reasonably, however, I don’t currently own a tablet, because I don’t think they’ve reached an acceptable price point and level of quality.

The cultural movement which promotes free content and freedom from DRM and other restrictive measures is not as ubiquitous and strongly resolved as it has presented itself to be. While I and many others are capable of downloading movies and TV shows illegally, we like the ease of Netflix and don’t mind watching ads on Hulu, so we don’t. The childish belief that information ought to be free is giving way to a more realistic view which accepts that some things are worth paying for. Piracy will still exist, but ultimately the market will sustain what there is a demand for, and one would hope that there is a demand for professionally-made, high-quality content.

Crowd-sourcing doesn’t advance editorial, or arts

When the largest possible crowd makes democratic decisions, decisions appeal to the median and are neither terrible nor great.

Because crowd-sourced aggregators dictate the direction of a great wealth of web traffic, editors naturally seek to appeal to the crowd, and thus the average. Creativity and genius are not, and have never been, considered crowd-based processes, or processes which should be designed to be average.

Which is better, a Hollywood film which was designed by a focus group and executed by talent, or an independent film which was designed and executed by talent? Clearly the latter, but Hollywood films are more successful, and always will be, right? So what’s to say that web content will ever cease to be crowd-oriented?

Nothing. The bulk of it will likely be forever stuck in average-ville. However, the success stories we read about and share will not be about these average offerings. While corporations struggle to figure out their online presences, smaller, more agile creatives will steal away increasing numbers of eyeballs, as indie films have done in recent history (some would say that “indie” films have “become mainstream,” but I’d contend that they’ve become successful, not less artistic. Still, highly experimental independent films don’t see mainstream success – but are they really meant to?).

Large companies will be successful by treating web ventures like indie films. They’ll employ small teams of creative producers who are capable of independently creating excellent websites, and they’ll only interfere when necessary to maintain a viable business plan. These teams will operate with low overhead and without traditional business structures. Many companies started this way, but grew into bureaucracy. They would be wise to grow out of it.

Fecalface is a fantastic example (no, it isn’t dirty – it’s an SF-based fine art and illustration publication). Fecal Face has made its way by targeting and loving a niche, and not by trying to appeal outside of its niche. It is a small, quality operation with a dedicated group of followers and advertisers.

Back on the topic of editorial, “The Top Five Annoying FreeCreditReport.com Commercials” will never build a dedicated audience of true fans, but it may garner 200,000 page views from Digg. Those page views can be monetized in the short term, but the success of the site as a whole depends on a continued reaction from the hivemind. What happens when the crowd moves on to something else? Or if the mob breaks up and its members become individuals again? Best appeal to individuals first, and the crowd second, which is something podcasts perfectly exemplify.

Podcasts are the ultimate human-oriented web expression

Podcasts are the best example of the Human Web. They require a predetermined and non-trivial (more than the 10 minute maximum length of a YouTube video) amount of time to consume. Their content can’t be indexed by search engines, and they are difficult to categorize and promote by the hive, because they require commitment to enjoy. They are difficult to monetize. They defy every rule of web marketing.

But they work, in their own way. They don’t bring in a lot of cash, and they don’t acquire huge audiences. They do, however, create extremely committed communities of fans who want to talk about and actively participate in the culture surrounding the content. Podcast fans are valuable fans, not empty page views – they are more than data.

You may never be able to operate a lucrative business by creating podcasts, but you can embrace the philosophy, and design something that is both lucrative and human-oriented.

What will websites look like on the Human Web?

If I were designing an avant-garde editorial website right now, it would:

• Be a screen-consuming HTML 5 application – slick, clean, and fast loading.
• Be as easy to navigate as possible, with no social media clutter. User convenience, and not raw page views, would be the most heavily weighted design consideration.
• Include a custom-built CMS which eases the creation of rich articles.
• Usable on any conceivable device, a PC, phone, tablet, etc… platform independence and persistent state computing is the future.
• Be designed to tolerate poor ad revenue, and make up for it with consumer purchases, be that in the form of subscriptions, donations, product sales, or other contributions – there is not  yet a clear precedent for what works in monetizing content-providing websites without a heavy reliance on ads. It has worked on occasion, but not often enough to be a trend. I do believe that it exists.

This new brand of website would be podcast-like in several ways. Content would not be designed to be consumed at a glance – it would be designed to be mulled over and enjoyed. Content would not be designed to appeal to everyone – it would be the creative endeavor of an individual. Unlike podcasts, the content would be indexable by search engines, but not because it was designed to conform to Google’s bot. The bias of the site would be toward quality of quantity and speed, and that is what would build a dedicated readership.

Will the web will be ruled by super-apps?

I am willing to pay for Xbox Live (Microsoft’s online gaming and content delivery service for the Xbox), a service which shares qualities with the early iterations of AOL. I pay a monthly fee, and in return, I get certain services and access to content. I might likewise be willing to subscribe, for some fee, to a larger, more-varied content provider.

Imagine a superbly designed and stocked HTML 5 app which I pay, say, $10-$50/month for access to depending on the level of service I want. Like Xbox Live, some content and features are offered as part of the subscription, and other, premium pieces of content require a one-time fee to access (on XBL, this is in the form of movie rentals and downloadable games). It would stream movies and TV shows, like Netflix. It would offer magazines, news, and other pieces of content, sourced from external providers, some major publishers, others independent. A variety of MMOs and other games would be a natural addition. Also possible: productivity applications, sexy-looking store catalogues (perhaps with 3D models of products, consumer reviews, etc.), high-quality discussion boards, a concierge service, etc.

Because this would be a web app, it would be platform-independent. At some point in the future, we’ll be able to load such applications on our TVs without any external device. I’ll log in from the TV in my hotel room when I’m traveling. I’ll also be free to log in on my phone, tablet, desktop, laptop, mp3 player and any other web-enabled device which supports modern web apps (they all will, eventually).

If I chose to cancel my subscription, my account will be demoted to some basic level which does not include anything offered by the subscription fee. However, as with Xbox Live, anything I purchased with a one-time fee will still be there for me to access.

Maybe not…

Neat thought as that is, the more likely scenario, as I mentioned previously, is that companies like Google and Apple will simply aggregate and promote a variety of web services. This still presents us with the problem of crowd-sourced promotion, but it isn’t as much of a problem. When the applications (perhaps the new word for “websites”) themselves are what’s being aggregated, and not their content, the problem is less severe. I’ll still be able to find National Geographic amongst the clutter of tabloids, as I can now.

Perhaps an article in this digital version of NatGeo will appear on Digg, but I will have accessed the entire, unfiltered magazine to enjoy as I please. And maybe it will cost me a monthly fee – I’ll pay for it if it’s reasonable. And it will be worth it. I won’t be pushed to “like” anything on Facebook, or e-mail anything to a friend, or click on any of the 50 links scattered across the page. I’ll just have a nice-looking, well-designed collection of interesting articles which just so happen to be presented on a screen. And I’m not referring to anything like the iPhone/iPad app. Most of those apps are sloppy, incomplete, or are just skins that direct you to the same old website (though I haven’t actually tried NatGeo’s app, I think it’s safe to assume that it isn’t on par with the physical magazine at this time). And, again, I’d much prefer a platform-independent solution that I can access anywhere, especially if I’m going to pay for it.

At least, that’s what I hope for.

The same may happen for TV, or anything at all. Maybe I really love photography – there’s an app for that (but hopefully a platform-independent app, and not an iPad app!). Not only does this service provide many photography magazines, it also offers a large selection of photography tutorials and lessons written by professionals, as well as an archive of famous photos, well-written and researched biographies of famous photographers, and other content I’d be interested in. This isn’t Wikipedia, which has its uses elsewhere. This is content with personality, written by professional writers… this is content to be absorbed, not quickly glanced to acquire some trivial piece of factual information.

True, a photography enthusiast may be able to find everything I’ve described on the internet as it exists now. But it’s scattered and ugly. I’m expected to know exactly what I’m searching for, or to stumble across something I like on an aggregator. Even websites dedicated to photography (or anything) are a pain to navigate –we’ve just become so accustomed to the standard practices of the internet that we ignore how awful they are.

You may also argue that such subscription-based (or one-time payment) web services already exist. Sure they do, but…

1. There are no larger entities handling subscriptions and payment – I don’t want a separate bill for everything. Apple and Google are doing it for phones, but not with platform-independent HTML 5 apps. Google is heading in that direction, though (again, the Chrome Web Store is this).
2. Most of them are porn.
3. They are hard to find, even if they are porn.

But aggregators aren’t all bad…

Of course they aren’t. There’s nothing wrong with people getting together and discussing shared interests. That’s one of the primary things that makes the internet great, and has from its inception. Whatever happens, we’re still going to share things. We’ll still watch YouTube videos, and receive all of the great, free benefits the internet offers – we’ll just have other, weightier options as well.

I’ve been a member of Reddit for over two years, and it has been enriching. I’ve seen some amazing things happen on the site, as well as some deplorable things, but overall, my interaction with the Reddit community has been positive – I especially enjoy the self-referential r/circlejerk, which exists solely to make fun of the site’s contributors.

What is bad is when the hivemind is weighted too heavily by both consumers of content and creators of content. I am not criticizing the existence of Reddit, Digg, Twitter, or Facebook, I am suggesting that the general attitudes and tastes of internet users are going to change in a way that favors individualism more significantly. Whereas Jaron Lanier laid out a criticism of the web’s current trends, I am suggesting that they will, and are already, changing, though perhaps not in the direction of Lanier’s ideal government-operated microtransaction system, which is a topic for another discussion.

So what is the dream?

Wasn’t the dream for the internet to create a digital library which made the entirety of human knowledge available? The internet in its current form is not a digital library, unless you took a library, threw all the books on the ground, chopped them all up, and said, “I can find any piece of information you want, as long as you know exactly what you’re looking for, or you can read whatever pages that mob of people over there is reading. What would you like to do? Oh, and by the way, would you like to buy care insurance?” How is that a rewarding experience?

The point is well-made by Lanier:

“An impenetrable tone deafness rules Silicon Valley when it comes to the idea of authorship. This was as clear as ever when John Updike and Kevin Kelly exchanged words on the question of authorship in 2006. Kevin suggested that it was not just a good thing, but a ‘moral imperative’ that all the world’s books would soon become effectively ‘one book’ once they were scanned, searchable, and remixable in the universal computational cloud.

Updike used the metaphor of the edges of the physical paper in a physical book to communicate the importance of enshrining the edges between individual authors. It was no use. Doctrinaire web 2.0 enthusiasts only perceived that Updike was being sentimental about an ancient technology.”

And, in his continued defense of Updike:

“A continuation of the present trend will make us like various medieval religious empires, or like North Korea, a society with a single book.”

Give me whole books, organize them neatly, and give them to me in a quiet room, so I can run my hand over their spines, pull them out, flip through their pages, and take my time. Metaphorically, of course, because I’ll be doing this on a tablet. But I’ll pay for it – I pay for physical libraries with my tax money, don’t I? And I love those.

Legislation in Washington DC has allowed same-sex couples to apply for marriage licenses. In related news, Republican congressmen are now sighing slightly more audibly when looking at their wives.

Apparently an Atheist group at a Texas university is giving away free porn in exchange for bibles, to illustrate that the bible contains objectionable material. A Christian group at the school is unphased, stating, “We’ve given away more free bibles in the last few days than ever before!”

I met a guy who said he wanted to be both President and Chief Justice of the United States. I said, “What are you, Taft?”

That joke was historical.

At a job interview I was asked if I was a strong negotiator. I told them I had no experience or other qualifications, so if they hired me I must be an effing expert.

Women are always complaining when I walk up behind them and massage their shoulders. I guess I’m a massagynist.

I once dated a woman who still subscribed to “Seventeen.” She had too many issues for me.

Think playing string instruments is hard? Try string theory instruments. Ever play a C sharp in the 10th dimension?

Facebooking, tweeting, youtubing, strategizing, editorializing, illustrating, administrating, redditing, contacting support, offering support, sending prizes, making Facebook mad at me, making spreadsheets, writing announcements, SEOing, SEMing, SMMing, direct marketing, viral marketing, brand identifying, pinging simplex synergizers and finding grassroots gardeners with suitable semantic web advertude and blogospheric influence. I need a beer.

• Trav_is_Foster Just saying Romney/Palin 2012 #losefollowerstuesday
• chinspired It’s called the WHITE house for a reason America. #losefollowerstuesday
• @b_e_loo @GamesRadar doesn’t know what they’re talking about; no one should play #Okami. #LoseFollowersTuesday.
• Lalikat I think I shall stop checking twitter until #losefollowerstuesday is over. Those that are participating seem to be extraordinarily unfunny.
• STDelicious #losefollowerstuesday Northern Ireland is so poor, they can’t even afford foreign terrorists.
• Brelston The only movie trilogy I care about is Three Ninjas #losefollowerstuesday #ohwaittherearefour
• GeminiAce Best thing about the homeless. They don’t make you use a condom. #losefollowerstuesday
• CAntista Did you know Vietnam’s primary export is still the American homeless? #losefollowerstuesday
• CAntista I would respect George Carlin more if he hadn’t stolen so many jokes from Carlos Mencia #losefollowerstuesday
• CAntista Not only will I remain unaware of Breast Cancer, I refuse to acknowledge its existence #losefollowerstuesday
• GamesRadarFan Arrested Development being canceled was the best thing to happen to TV since Glenn Beck! #losefollowerstuesday

I social media’d.

• Ratatat – Seventeen Years (MP3) (Blahg)
• Daft Punk – Robot Rock (Soulwax Remix) (MP3) (Blahg)
• 1,2,3 – Confetti (MP3) (Blahg)
• NORA – Quiet (MP3) (Blahg)
• The Rapture – Echoes (MP3) aka the opening to…

…the show Misfits. Worth a watch.

I was having some boozi with a friend a few weeks ago, and we were both itching for a smoke, but we had to go one at a time so we wouldn’t lose our prime bar seating. And he said…

“Do you mind if I just…go first?”

TITS! He put me in a verbal headlock with the most powerful question in the English language: “Do you mind?” This lead to a Seinfeldian discussion about the phrase, like we do, and this is what I’ve now determined:

If you deny the request which follows a “do you mind,” you’re implying that the asker is being unreasonable. Thus the askee is forced to decide if the interaction will be pleasant or confrontational, and this dilemma can crush the strongest wills. There is a counter, if you have the balls, and that is another “do you mind.” You can prefix it with an “actually” for added impact.

“Actually, do you mind if I go first?”

It didn’t work.

Anyway, I do have a point, and that is that signage could benefit from this observation. Instead of our office’s flaccid “Please! Keep the kitchen clean,” which basically says, “Whatever, fuck this shit up,” the sign should read, “Do you mind keeping the kitchen clean? Thanks champ.” That’s a compelling sign. That sign says, “Damn straight you’re keeping this kitchen clean, you filthy bastard.”

By the way, do you mind leaving a comment on this post? Thanks pal.

• My dad was a blacksmith. We would have gotten along better, but he always had an axe to grind.
• I care about the environment, but tree sitters are really going out on a limb.
• If my options were hell or high water, I’d take the problem solved by floating on something.
• I thought I smelled something fishy, but it turned out to be a red herring.
• I feel like a million dollars: dirty, wrinkled, and covered with cocaine.
• Nobody likes being wrong. The problem with politicians is that they can do something about it.
• I know hardship, I once had to eat nothing but food for three weeks.
• I was once so broke that I only had three dollars in my checking account. I found two more dollars in my pocket, deposited them, and wrote a check for a pack of cigarettes. It’s that kind of thinking that got me a pack of cigarettes.
• I used to know a guy who had synesthesia, but he said he couldn’t talk with me anymore because my voice tasted too purple.
• One of my friends told me he’s a compulsive liar, but I don’t believe him.