Random Thoughts

Recently I was talking to someone about Myspace.com. He asked whether I thought that he should get a Myspace account or a facebook account. My immediate reaction was that he should get a facebook account. It seemed to meet his needs the most and I couldn't say how much longer myspace would be popular. I thought about it some more, and it seemed that myspace would need to change the format to stay competitive in the future. Soon afterward, myspace,com changed its format. Its going to take a little bit more than myspace changing the arrangement of links and banner ads on the page for it to stay around...

I was thinking of watching cartoons when I was growing up. I always had my favorites. At the end of the season, there was always the option of watching reruns of all of the cartoons that I watched already, or watching a season of some other cartoon on some other channel. I probably chose to watch reruns of the same cartoons 90% of the time as opposed to watching episodes of a different cartoon that I had not seen. It would be interesting to know what that says about me. I am still that same way except that it applies to things other than cartoons now.

I was goofing around on facebook and I saw an "I hate Andre" page for some guy who has the same name as me. I thought it was interesting: Was it a joke that he was in on? Is he oblivious to this page? Its funny to think about these sorts of things...

An Interesting Theory

It has been suggested that my blog is a diary. It definitely does not explore the inner-most recesses of my mind, but I see the person's point. I had an interesting conversation with someone recently. It seemed blog worthy soooo...

I havent studied this sort of thing or read much about it, but I wondered what a friend of mine thought of this idea. It didnt receive as poor of a response as my blog about coffee abuse...
A while ago, I read an article about a person who was born with webbed feet. If I recall correctly, it was said to be a result of some sort of mutation. I wondered if that was not the case. I wondered if webbed feet was some sort of building block: Perhaps we evolved from having webbed feet and since what we are now is built on top of that, people are born with webbed feet occasionally as some sort of evolutionary glitch. I thought that this could apply to some other abnormailites as well.

The person who I had the conversation with thought that it was an interesting theory but made the counter argument that some people are born retarded but that doesnt mean that we evolved from people who are retarded. I thought that we could have evolved from beings who had similar capabilities to someone who is retarded at some point in history. Interesting to think about...

Hackers

Privacy has been a major issue with my online experiences lately. My myspace blog has been hacked into numerous times. I have had blog entries deleted from that particular blog as well as other issues. It has gotten to the point where I log into myspace and there are minor alterations to my page like changing my height that let me know that my account has been hacked yet again. I change my password very frequently....How does one prevent this from happening? Is it possible to prevent hackers from getting into online accounts?

Webpage

I was thinking of creating a webpage. So many people have a webpage (in addition to their myspace, facebook, etc), that I almost (ALMOST) feel left behind because I havent created one yet. I have a lot of different ideas for a webpage but I want to make sure that they are completely set before I create one. I have so many pseudo-websites and online creations that I may just combine them all and present the finished product as a website. I probably have an F3 for my combined online efforts up to this point...Though this has been a successful rating for me, I will aim for something different when i create my website...

Irony

When I was a kid, one of my favorite shows was Alfred Hitchcock Presents. I was not born when the series was on television, but I watched reruns on a station that showed shows from the 60s. The interesting thing about the show was that it hit on the fact that Irony could be very scary. Almost every episode followed a formula where the was a mystery that had a creepy build-up that ended in an ironic plot twist that was scary and often lingered in my mind for a few days. This formula was present in almost every episode, yet it was done so craftily that it almost always worked.

From what I can see, using irony to scare people is a lost artform. This formula was used in the movie "The Sixth Sense" and it worked very well. I have seen other movies that attempted to do something similar to this but it didn't work nearly as well. I think that this is funny because Alfred Hitchcock used this Formula for a half-hour every week (or however often the show aired) and was always successful with it. The Twililight zone aired at the same time as Alfred Hitchcock Presents. Since The Twilight Zone often used this same formula, A person could see an hour worth of that type of plot every week and it was always quality.

I wonder why irony is not used to scare people anymore. Maybe they overused that style in the 60's and no one wanted to use it anymore. It would be great if someone cared enough to perfect it again, though...

I Don't Know Where I Am

There are so many situations where things are very much not what they seem to be by outward appearances. Looking at it with no further context, it basically looks like standard fanfare. Then someone explains that there is more to it and casts a completely different light on ths situation. I remember once when I was in Hollywood, I went to a bar by myself. This was a pretty standard bar and the theme was that it played a certain type of music. It seemed pretty typical and this was always the case when I was there with friends. A guy who I knew randomly from being around Hollywood in general advised me that I should always go to that particular bar w/ a girl and that I would never meet girls at that particualr bar. I was talking to a girl right at that moment when he showed up but apparently what I was experiencing right then was a very unrandom sample of what happens there. This is an intense paraphrasing of the conversation but it definitely made me think long and hard about what I think I am seeing when I look at a stiutation and whether it is a different place altogther to a person who has some "insider-info" about it.

Contributing

I logged into Myspace recently and I had a friend request. I always find these friend requests interesting because I am not listed under my actual name. Its usually not someone who could have clicked through and found my profile either. Maybe I should send these people a message and let them know that they found the wrong "Dre McCracken" and that they should add the other listing for that name.

I was also thinking about "contributing to society". What is enough? People have a wide range of opinions on this issue. I think that one thing is for certain: If you "invent the wheel," thats pretty much as good as it gets. I dont mean this literally, but some equivalent. If you "invent the wheel", people have to give you your due respect and call it a day. How can a person top this aside from "inventing yet another wheel"? And so my quest to "invent the wheel" begins...

Documentaries

Recently I was watching a documentary on one of those channels that only shows documentaries. They always seem to have some documentary about Albert Einstein's dating life or the evolution of cats showing. I saw one documentary that actually seemed interesting so I decided to watch. It was about Ancient Egypt and the building of the pyramids/ mummies.

The most interesting thing was that there were so many "near as we can figure"s and "we really don't know how they did this"'s in the documentary. This led me to wonder about these questions and similar mysteries that remain unanswered: Is it that we really can't answer these questions or is it that most people who have the aptitude to figure these things out are not interested. I know a lot of brilliant people who might want to watch a documentary and get the answer to these questions, but have no desire to do what it takes to join a project where people are attempting to answer these questions...

Blow-Outs

Earlier today, I was playing an NBA basketball videogame. This game saves my season so whenever I decide to play a game I just play the next game on the schedule. I am pretty good at this game so I generally win the game in blow-out. Occasionally, I play a game that is a blow-out even by blow-out standards: The game that I played today was one of those games.

My team scored at will in the most remarkable fashion that I have ever seen. I literally scored at will no matter what type of play I was running. The interesting thing about it is that when I looked at the score, I expected to see more points scored and a wider margin of victory. This wasn't the case: My team scored less points than it does on average and won by a smaller margin of victory than usual.

This made me think about real basketball games and how this idea might apply to other situations. There's two types of blow-outs: There's the blow-out where one team beats the other team by a huge margin...Then there's the blow-out where you put Shaq in a point guard so that he can get a quinteple-double. The second type much worse...

Sitcoms

I was thinking of when I used to watch situation comedies while I was growing up. It has been years since I watched television regularly. I watch television occasonally, but I never keep up with storylines. It was rare that I liked a situation comedy when I was younger. The comedy in so many of them was based on putting the main character(s) in an awkward or humiliating position and having the audience laugh at them while they try to get out of the mess. While watcing thses types of comedies, I found myself feeling angst for the character(s)more than laughing. I alway wondered if other people reacted to those types of shows the same way.

New Emotion

I have been thinking about something interestng lately. There are people in the world who are literally incapable of feeling the full range of emotions that other people feel. From what I understand, there are numerous ways that that this can occur. This led me to think about somthing different. Are there people in the world who can feel emotions beyond what other people can feel? If not, is it possible that people would develop new emotions that are not present in the future?

If people who have emotions in addition to what most other people have exist, how would we ever become aware of it? Could a person who didn't have the newly developed emotion(s) fathom that someone had an emotion that they didn't? Would the person who was capable of experiencing the new emotion ever have any sense of being different from everyone else? Also, it would be interesting to see how it is determined that a new emotion exists. Would a someone be able to look directly at the person with the additional emotion(s) and determine that that person had more emotion(s) than a normal person? Or is it possible that it would be determined by deduction: By looking at behavior and reasoning backward to the fact that some new emotion must have caused it. I need to move soon: With nothing to do my mind wonders to such topics...

The Mysterious Pop-Up

I am the type of person who is often lost in thought. When I am in the middle of something, I am often thinking of something else in the back of my mind. Occasionally, something random will happen that clears my mind. Something that I have always found interesting is the types of things that clear my mind completely.

I had one of these mind-clearing occurrences recently. While surfing the web, I went to a webpage and a pop-up showed on my screen. It might seem weird that a pop-up caused me to pause and cleared my mind completely, but there was somthing different about this one. I have four pop-up blockers running on my computer at once. I can't remember the last time that I had seen a pop-up before that one. Does using four pop-up blockers prevent pop-ups better than one? Does it make it easier for pop-ups to get through somehow? I haven't been the ame since...

360 degrees

I have become very cynical since I moved back to Michigan. At some point in the not-so-distant past, I wasn't cynical at all. This is not a significant thing: A lot of people face situations that make them more cynical. The interesting thing about it is that I am so cynical that I might not seem cynical at all anymore. Its as if my cynicism has taken me around the block and back to my original position.

Today I received an anonymous letter in my e-mail box that said that I should leave the city where I live immediately and that I was in danger. I could have easily been alarmed at receiving such a letter. Instead, I agreed with the letter and started packing my bags. Better advice was never given by a stranger...

The Sold-Out Tour

There are so many examples of artists who have had successful tours. They have sold out every single venue in every city in every country they have been in. These artists are extremely popular and have a huge fan-base. This made me wonder: Has there ever been an artist or speaker who has sold out every single venue and made a fortune because people hated them so much? It has to happen at some point if it hasn't already. Has there ever been an artist where record numbers of people paid hundreds of dollars to buy tickets just to go boo and heckle the guy? How many people have made fortunes because people hated them so much? Its interesting to think about...

Lost or where it should be?

Today, I was looking for a USB cord. I looked everywhere that I could have possibly misplaced it: Still no USB cord. Then it occured to me: The only time that I can't find something like that is when I make it a point to put it somewhere so that I wont lose it. Now I just have to figure out where it's "supposed" to be...

I adjusted my workout since my last entry. Now, my workout consists of 200 pushups (short breaks between sets of 20-25). Then I do a circuit that consists of 20-25 pushups, 130 crunches, 50 squats, and 150 calf raises. I repeat this circuit 3 times. It works pretty well and it doesn't take a lot of time out of my day.

Coffee

I was feeling a little bit sluggish today and something occured to me: It used to be rare that I felt this way because I drank a lot of coffee. While I was in law school, I had nothing if not caffeine in my system. Now I almost never have coffee. I think that anyone who has ever had coffee has had the experience of drinking a bit too much and feeling a little bit jittery or not being able to fall asleep fast enough.

This made me wonder: How many people have ever drank too much coffee and it was a serious problem. At what point does a person have too much coffee and they reeeeeally are not okay? Has coffee ever pushed someone over the edge? No one ever talks about that sort of thing...

My new blog

When I first started blogging on myspace, I thought that I would only blog on that website. Now that I have posted a number of blogs, I figured that I would start a blog on a more formal site.

Recently, I took a trip to Ann Arbor. I have been to Ann Arbor since I graduated but something was different about this time. It felt like it was vaguely familiar: Like I was remembering it from a dream and not somewhere i had actually been before. It was cool to be back for a few days, see some friends, and be productive but it made me miss L.A. more. Also made me think about what i would have done differently if I could go back in time and be in undergrad again. I guess everyone thinks about that sort of thing, though.

I also thougt that that this was interesting. I have been doing a new workout lately. Its one that I can do at home so its cool. The interesting thing about it is that I didnt expect it to be nearly as effective as it has been. I just sort of made it up on the spot and didn't expect it to have much of an impact all. I was wrong. I have spent more than 3 hrs per day five times per week and seen worse results. The workout is 100 pushups, then I do a circuit that consists of 15-20 pushups, 100 crunches, and 50 squats. I do this circuit until I can't anymore. Every week I just do more of each. It defnitely doesnt take the place of going to the gym but it is helping a lot in the meantime...