Someone romantically close to me recently pointed out that by putting her on a pedestal I implied I was worse or less valuable myself. It doesn’t make for a very equal relationship nor does it really project confidence. I think the tendency to hold others up above oneself has some useful functions, however, which is probably why it’s been a mechanism for most of my life:

1) It keeps my ego in-check, and makes sure I never I become out of touch like my mentally-ill mother. My hyperactive happy or subject-engaged states make me miss emotional cues (the mind reading I’m so very bad at that is the expectation or need for many introverts or people who have anxiety issues). Over-focusing on others helps to prevent this.

2) Like it or not most of us derive a degree of validation, income or purpose from interactions with others – what they think of us and how much they bother with us contributes to our construction of self-esteem – even if we don’t like people all that much. In COVID this effect is amplified: I live alone and nobody (besides maybe my family) is going to care about me if I don’t reach out to them and care about them first. Most people I know in the world have more people who care about them. It’s hard not to see that as a kind of evidence supporting the possibility that they are in fact better and more deserving. If they weren’t they wouldn’t get the attention and effort they do. I can’t blame people for not caring enough about me to ever reach out or initiate – so many of them are lost in their own internal struggles or care for pets or children, why should or would they have time for me? I am empirically not worth it.

3) Affording myself the same compassion and patience I give others is harder than it sounds because it doesn’t map out evenly – I don’t give my family enough benefit of the doubt and I give [potential] romantic interests too much. In the world of online dating where most women I’m interested in are swamped with too many men to handle even the smallest error will result in me getting cut-loose. It’s hard to not be hard on yourself when that’s the stakes. Sure, I can choose to think they should treat me better and instead invest more in friends and family, but this leaves me without physical intimacy in my life.

The result of this, when I’m in a positive state of mind, is that I thrust an enormous degree of energy outward to connect: compliments and gratitude and attempts to bring others together for events. Many of my conversations begin with an apologetic format in an attempt to imply that I recognize my intrusiveness, despite my attempts to curtail such habits.

Except that’s still not what people want much of the time, certainly not in COVID. Fact of the matter is in the romantic world I still don’t know what most women want. Coy one-liners and someone who always knows the right [concise] thing to say or do? Openness to commitment and love mostly seem to scare the shit out of folks. Sex and security become relatively low-value when so many others in line can offer different or better. I’m pretty easily able to be vulnerable and am eager listen to stories and find countless ways to connect to or care, too, but that’s insufficient. See them for who they are, make them feel heard, right? Except the harder you try to do this the worse you do – dating is perhaps the only occurrence of this paradox in the world? It’s too bad I can’t just meditate to find inner balance and suddenly women will want to shag me for more than a week.

Actions often go unobserved, words become superfluous, it’s like some mythical invisible emotional energy I just don’t exude in the right way or something. A lot of my hobbies are obscure or nerdy so it’s just easier to find common-ground with theirs – after all, I do really enjoy learning and have found I can appreciate a great deal in the world. Yet another coping mechanism.

40 romantic failures so far in 2020. Without the pedestal strategy I wouldn’t have had the dozen that at least had mixed results.

Social Networking, of course. I happened upon DoggySpace.com this morning and thought it was funny but also dangerously dancing the line between cute and obsessive. Visitors can come to the site to create a social networking profile for their pooch. They can then choose to flush out basic information like gender and type but also fill in interactivity and comprehensive identity related items such as “about me.”

As a social scientist this makes me wonder about several things:

• How much are people projecting their own personalities onto their pets? Could it be a foray into identity tourism? Who is the man behind the Rottweiler? Why is this person hitting on my Westie?
• Will the site be a feat in misdirection and an indirect contact medium for people interested in meeting or dating others? I mean that’s largely what dog meet-ups are about, right? Nice dog, wanna frak?
• Do you think some bloke will be fan enough of our parents’ culture of fear to request privacy controls for their pet?
• Which dogs get the most friends? Just the ones who are the most active or do you think it’ll have to do with the cuteness/funny factor too?
• Will LOLcatz language dominate exchanges throughout the site? Or we see the spawn of a new tribute to grammar’s demise?
• Is this place more successful than the cat competition, MyCatSpace.com
• How soon until Facebook and MySpace start acquiring sites like this?

You know I still do believe one of the hallmarks of digital literacy is comfort and familiarity with virtual (digital) individual and group identities, but this is a little strange, even for me. Just wait until my mom puts our dog up on there…

For those of you shuffling off to college this next August I’ve found a spectacular tool for you:
An essay generator. No, it’s not that silly simple one that spews out a few paragraphs and images, this one uses really big and scary words. And apparently got past the acceptance requirements for Social Text, a journal by the Duke University Press.
In any event I invite you to try it out – simply visit this page and you’ll get a new masterpiece every time!

I figured I’d present to you method of experiencing the world in a little more of an… animated fashion than a traditional map. I know most of you already know him and have likely seen one of his videos, but this one was released just last month.

He dances. Badly. Everywhere in the world. Just for fun.

I’ve been doing a lot of editing documents lately and it has come to my attention that I never knew the difference between i.e. and e.g., and have therefore used them interchangeably. That’s probably not a great idea now that I’m writing for a wider audience than my friends who read this blog so I looked it up. Here’s what I found.
“I.e.” stands for the Latin phrase ‘id est’ or _that is_. “I.e.” is used in place of “in other words,” or “it/that is.” One uses i.e. when one wants to specify a previous point or re-phrase something to catch a different nuance of meaning.
“E.g.” is also Latin, though it stands for ‘exempli gratia’, which translates as _for the sake of an example._ One uses e.g. when an example is needed, but one wants to imply that the examples given are just some of the many possible examples.
Some examples:
* Her heart sunk as the ship disappeared into the water; i.e., she was devastated. _from_ “_WiseGeek.com_”:http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-the-difference-between-ie-and-eg.htm
* I like citrus fruits (e.g., oranges and lemons). _from_ “_Daily Writing Tips_”:http://www.dailywritingtips.com/the-difference-between-eg-and-ie/

” “The Go Game”:http://www.thegogame.com/team/index.asp is the future of corporate play. It’s the intersection of wireless technology, Mission: Impossible, and team-building as you have never seen it.”
This is hide and go seek, capture the flag, and any other silly game all wrapped into one. First of all you are issued a lunch box (right) filled with all the necessary tools for fun: Cell phone, digital camera, a CD, a host of actors, a scripted game plot, and prizes. Seriously! What happened to good old fashioned four square? Check out this “gallery”:http://www.thegogame.com/team/gallery/photos.asp of corporate folk having fun. Some selections below.
http://duenos.net/article/421/Stuffwhitepeoplelike about "Stuff White People Like":http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/ for similar embarrassment.

The planet is scattered with hazardous or explosive leftovers from a succession of technical breakthroughs – be they military or industrial – just waiting to be washed away by a flood or mudslide or carried off by a hurricane. If disaster strikes these “powder kegs” multiply the danger to people and the environment.
If this topic is of any interest to you, please see “President Eisenhower’s farewell speech”:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8y06NSBBRtY about the dangers of the arms race and what he and many others term the “Military Industrial Complex.” Many of the landmines and other weapons used to kill all over the world have their roots here in the United States and it is only by waking up to this and changing the subsidy programs in this country that we can possibly change the violent realities in other countries. In the mean-time, there are organizations like the “International Campaign to Ban Land Mines”:http://www.icbl.org/ that work to deal with the short-term effects of this plague.
This map and description has been shamelessly lifted from “UNEP”:http://maps.grida.no/go/graphic/conflicts_and_disasters_potential_powder_kegs_landmines_and_other_explosives.
Previously featured on Duenos:
* “Anti-Landmine Commercial”:http://duenos.net/article/68/iraq-war-continues-unimpeded-soccer-players-at-risk – A scary look at what it could mean if these problems were as common here as they are in some of the places highlighted in the map above.
* “Map Monday: Thermohaline circulation”:http://duenos.net/article/433/MapMondayThermohalineoceancirculation – The current that keeps the world temperate.
* “Map Monday: Deforestation in Borneo”:http://duenos.net/article/432/MapMondayDeforestationinBorneo – Another human trend that is doing damage, this time to Orangutans.

http://www.google.com/intl/xx-bork/, "Elmer Fudd":http://www.google.com/intl/xx-elmer/, "l33t":http://www.google.com/intl/xx-hacker/, "Klingon":http://www.google.com/intl/xx-klingon/, and many more. Visit Google "Language Tools":http://www.google.com/language_tools to see them all.