Facebook Fools Day!

About 5 or 6 years ago, Facebook was the brainchild of a Harvard student who thought it'd be a good idea to create a social networking site for college students. And it was! But little did he know that a mere half-decade later his creation would become the be-all, end-all when it comes to relationships among teenagers and young adults... and now even adult adults.

Wanna insult someone who's done you great injustice? Just delete them as your friend on Facebook - there exists no greater slap-in-the-face. Need to solidify the status of you and your new love interest? Just add "...are in a relationship" after their name on your Facebook profile and voila! Now your peers immediately recognize you two lovebirds as a legitimate couple. Has a certain someone been buggin' ya lately and now you need to passive-aggressively make it clear to them that the two of you are in a tiff? Just ignore their Facebook message/wall-post/"hey" on Facebook chat and Mission: Accomplished! I am constantly astounded by how seriously we, the Facebook Generation, take things we see on our News Feed. It's sort of as if God Himself was continuously streaming the goings-on of our friends.

Tomorrow is April Fools' Day. To celebrate the occasion I have decided to test the prowess of the Almighty FB as a social superpower; Lisa Marie (an ex-girlfriend) and I are going to be "engaged" on Facebook for the day. Now the notion of the two of us tying the knott is utterly ridiculous: we've been broken up for nearly a year, have not at any point gotten back together, and we both have about as much stability in our lives as Nickelback has musical ingenuity. Lisa even has a new sort-of boyfriend, so who in their right mind would believe that the two of us have decided to take the matrimonial plunge, right? Well, I'll bet you that quite a few actually do. Why? Well, because it's on Facebook, of course. So it must be true! Let's see what happens...

...And I must give a big shout-out to my one-and-only blog "follower" at the moment, Emily Catherine! You go, girl!

ManBaby

When you're alone, you really don't realize just how alone you are until you get sick. Moaning and groaning and tossing and turning in your bed, you yearn for someone to bring you bring you sustenance, kiss you on the forehead, take your temperature, wipe the dribble from your chin and tell you that everything's gonna be okay. You want someone to baby you like Mom and your girlfriend used to whenever viruses attacked. Then grim reality sets in; one is no longer around and the other no longer exists. Well she does, but she's now wiping the dribble off some other guy's chin... so to speak. I guess... Anyway, so you lie there in silence, slowly becoming fully conscious of the fact that no one is coming to rescue you as you wallow in self-pity. So it hits you: "Wow. I'm miles and miles from home. Totally and completely on my own." So you grab your stuffed animal (not that I still sleep with a stuffed animal named Bradley) and ask yourself "Well shit, what am I supposed to do now?"

...Well for one thing you can man up and stop feeling sorry for yourself. Take control of your life and make things happen for yourself. You don't need women to take care of you. You don't need anyone else to keep you motivated. You are entirely capable of doing these things on your own. Be proactive. Do not be deterred. Don't take 'no' for an answer. This is the life you have chosen for yourself. You only get once chance to live it. Second-guessing yourself is thoroughly useless. Don't let the fire burn out. Don't let this city suck the soul out of you. You came here for a reason. Make it happen...

Bitch.

Ya know what sucks? ...Me!

The actor: a portrait of insecurity. Me: no exception. Luckily I happen to be very secure in my insecurity. Perhaps it's for this reason that I so enjoy self-deprecating humor. (Or perhaps it's because I share the same birthday as Conan O'Brien, the standing King of said humor since the death of Rodney Dangerfield.) And what's not to like about it? It disarms people who might otherwise have ammunition to use against you; kind of like saying, "You can't fire me! Because I QUIT!" Wanna lambaste me for having the hands and wrists of a 12-year-old girl? For being a college graduate with hardly a dime to his name? For my perpetual brooding? For my severe lack of "game?" For being painfully average in nearly every way imaginable? Well TOO BAD, 'cause I'll beat you to the punch. That's right, I'll write a sardonic, self-flagellating blog title faster than you can say "dude, Dylan, you're probably worse at basketball than my 87-year-old grandmother."

But then again, perhaps my affinity for sticking it to me stems from catching myself far too often in acts of glaring hypocrisy; being overly-critical of others for faults of which I myself am just as guilty, if not more so. So before raking anyone over the coals, I've taught myself to take a good, long look in the mirror first... and if I'm able to vindicate myself after doing so, then by god I'll be merciless on the fucker! But only after some good ol' introspection.

Another fun off-shoot of self-deprecation, I've found, is faux egomania. A recent example: "Do you work out often?" ..."Well obviously, how do you think I sculpt these pythons?" (Knowing full well that due to my recent lack of working out, my arms resembled those of Olive Oil at the time.) Faux egomania, however, must be handled with extreme caution; you do, after all, run the risk of having it mistaken for genuine egomania, which unfortunately runs rampant in my not-so-beloved home of Los Angeles. And now that I mention it, one thing I've discovered in the "industry" is that the most inflated egos usually belong to those who have the least to be egotistical about (id est, those who really haven't done shit yet), while those whose hard work has been rewarded with success generally tend be the more humble and pleasant.

I find the notion that there's something about me that makes me any more spectacular than the next guy downright laughable. As hard as I've tried not to be, the fact is that I'm all too human; utterly, utterly flawed. I think that pointing out and laughing about the various things that make me so from time to time is healthy and keeps me grounded. If, by chance, some freak accident occurs and I start to brim with self-satisfaction, I've often instructed those close to me that they have the permission to kick me square in the nuts. This goes for all (if any) who ever read this...

...and in other news, hooray! New blog!