knomat?

I paid a visit to St. Elmo’s Coffee Pub today, as I do quite often, to get a cup of coffee. Usually, there are a handful of teenage-looking folks behind the counter serving up coffee and various other snacks. Today, there was only the owner. Attempting to drum up conversation, I asked, “Where’s all your help today?” Thinking this was an innocent question, I wasn’t quite expecting the response I was given - something to the effect of “We’re changing shifts, so it’s just me. You can be patient, right? We’re in no rush here. That’s how we like to do it, right Bob?” (Bob was apparently a regular standing next to me in line.) “If you’re in a rush, go to Starbucks.”

I wasn’t, in fact, in a rush, crazy owner lady. I was simply attempting to strike up a conversation with you, because I’ve not done so yet. I strike up a conversation with all the friendly folks who work at your coffee shop. I’m sorry I asked. Lesson learned. Calm down. I will, in fact, go to Starbucks from now on. 711, even.

Dave: “If I had a Chinese restaurant I’d name it General Tso’s Your Mom.”

What would you name your Chinese Restaurant?

I got caught checking in on an ex-girlfriend in probably the most awkward way possible. All thanks to the modern wonder of social networking. I decided to take a look at said ex-girlfriend’s Facebook profile. You’ve all done it. Don’t lie. When I arrive at the profile page, I notice that my ex (who we’ll call Jane for the sake of explanation) has uploaded some new pictures to her Facebook page. As I’m navigating my mouse pointer to click on “View more pictures of Jane,” I was a bit too quick on the trigger and mistakenly clicked on the link immediately below. This link, my friends, was called “Hug Jane.”

Now, while some of you are laughing because you understand why this is funny, let me explain to the rest of you not so familiar with Facebook. Facebook has this dumb feature built in called “Poke,” with which you can “poke” someone. A “poke” is merely a brief message that shows up in the pokee’s inbox that says, “Someone has poked you.” Some genius decided to come up with a more powerful poking application called, appropriately, “SuperPoke.” With SuperPoke you can do things like drop-kick, bitch slap, throw a sheep at, and, in this case, hug people. All this simply shows up on one’s Facebook profile page as “So and so has [x] so and so.” Where x = things like the ones I’ve just described. A recent example from my experience: “Matt has bitch slapped Dave using Super Poke.”

So, back to my story. I think you’ll start to understand why what I did can prove to be problematic. What I had just done, essentially, was hugged an ex who I hadn’t seen or talked to in a good year or so. The message to her would have come through something like this. “Matt has hugged you.” The message also would have appeared on her profile as “Matt has hugged Jane.”

I hope this will serve as a warning to you all, because I know that you’re checking up on your ex-girlfriends/boyfriends. Proceed (stalk) with caution.

Here’s an interesting interview with Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipeda, from the New York Times Magazine. It reads as though someone forwarded him one of those “Learn more about me” e-mails and has some interesting facts about him. Interestingly, we share the same guilty pleasure - playing Scrabble on Facebook.

It just now hit me. Twitter was built to satisfy one of my greatest curiosities - what are people doing? I know, I know, that was their tag line when it first launched, right? “What are you doing?” But it didn’t really sink in until I just realized that I could visit the public time line and essentially look at updates from everyone in the world who is on Twitter. I can hit refresh every 2 seconds and there will be 20 new things to read. Curiosity overload!

So, back to my point. I’ve always been strangely fascinated with wondering what people are doing, where they’re going, and why they’re here or there. In rush hour traffic, I’d see people in the opposite lane and try to figure out what their story is. I’d walk past apartment buildings and see strangers in windows and wonder what their life is like. I’d be sitting at home reading a book wondering how many other people were sitting at home reading the book I was reading at the exact same moment. I’ve always just been generally curious about people. Maybe that’s why I talk to strangers so much.

Now, there is Twitter. Of course, it doesn’t satisfy my curiosity to the fullest extent. Many tweets, as they’re called, are filled with general thoughts and musings. However, it really gets at that curiosity - What are you doing? What are you thinking, even?

Right now, someone:

• fed their cat some banana, and he’s content at last
• is surprised that the Buckeyes are only up 7-3
• is dragging them self out of bed, to the shower, to get groceries, and then back home
• played like a girl in touch football and is now going to play paint ball
• is on their way to the Kanye West show
• just signed up one of their friends for a J. Peterman catalog and is hoping they’ll deliver to Switzerland

Sometimes, I find myself just watching the public time line, clicking refresh every now and again, to find out what some people are up to right now, right this very second. I’m curious … that’s all.