I want to be friends with Wil Wheaton

Quick reference for the uninformed: Wil Wheaton played one of the kids in Stand by Me and Wesley Crusher on Star Trek: The Next Generation. He has also done other stuff, he'd probably like for you to know, has written a couple good books, and runs a website, among other things. He's an all-around cool guy.

So I was reading Wil Wheaton's blog the other day when I realized that we're a lot alike. We're both geeks, we're both smart, we're both decent writers, etc. We like the same shows, we have the same attitude. He even mentioned a thing he does with a driving companion where he points at a hay wagon and says, "Hey!"

I do that! I love it as much as my driving companions hate it.

Me: "Hey!"
Driving Companion: "What?"
Me: *points at hay wagon*
Driving Companion: *rolls eyes*

Also, in a pinch, I've been known to do the same thing with "Great!" and point at a sewer drain.

Anyhoo, he seems like he'd be a cool guy to hang out with, and I'm pretty sure we'd easily get along. But there's a problem.

He's a famous person.

You see, famous people aren't friends with regular people (and it's not their fault; it's ours). At least, they aren't in my personal experience. There are reasons for this.

Reason #1: Famous people tend to live a distance from you.

It's a matter of statistics. It's also a matter of most famous people living on the West coast and most regular people living in the rest of the country, which there is a lot of. Let's say, for example, that Wil reads this blog and, in a momentary lapse of reason, decides to become friends with me on this post alone. It's not like he's going to take time out of his busy schedule and personal life to fly over to Western PA and play Fireball Island with me, and I wouldn't expect him to. Most friends live near each other.

"But Julian," you may be saying, "Let's say, due to this temporary insanity that Wil is suffering, he wants to be your friend anyway. Friends e-mail each other, right?"

That's true, they do. But this also leads me (thank you, hypothetical inquisitive person) directly into the flux capacitor of my next reason.

Reason #2: Famous people have no reason to trust you.

You have to look at it from their point of view. What if I'm a stalker? Wil doesn't want to have to deal with that.

I'm not, by the way. I own a minivan, I drink Fuzzy Navels ("I'll have a Fuzzy Navel and she'll have the most womanly drink at this bar" "Two Fuzzy Navels coming right up"), and I have a copy (two, actually) of Fireball Island; I'm the least dangerous person I know.

But I could be. Anyone could. For all Wil knows, he could show up to play my running gag for this post and end up chained in my basement wearing a Starfleet uniform with a rainbow on it.

And famous people also have no reason to believe that you won't give out their E-Mail address. It's as simple as that.

Reason #3: You're not the only one.

You may think you're a special and unique snowflake, you may think that you'd be great friends with a famous person, but I'm guessing there's a million other people who think the same thing.

It's like my crush on Thora Birch. I may believe that she's the perfect woman for me, but have you Googled her name recently? Have you Googled the name of any famous person you want to be friends with? There are whole websites dedicated to them. Lots of them. Obviously, someone else out there likes them as much, if not more, than you do. They probably get tons and tons of E-Mails and letters from people professing their undying love.

"But Julian," you may say again, "I'm sure that if [insert famous person here] knew about me, they'd see that I'm different than all those other people."

That may be true. However...

Reason #4: Famous people don't know you exist.

That pretty much sums it up.

So, all in all, I think I take a pretty logical stance on the issue of becoming friends with famous people. Wil Wheaton, Thora Birch, Mike Rowe... I think I'd be a cool guy for any of them to hang out or chat with. But it's probably not going to happen unless I become famous myself.

And that's the key to the whole thing. Want to be friends with a famous person? Be famous.

That's the goal. Someday, I'll be a famous writer. And even though the money and recognition will be nice, the best thing will be calling up other famous people and inviting them over for Fireball Island.

Me: "Wasn't that fun?"
Wil: "Yeah... I can't believe I've beat you 50 times in a row. You really suck at Fireball Island."
Me: "Let me show you something in my basement."

Updates! Sort of.

Hey! I know no one cares about (or even is aware of) this blog, but I just wanted everyone to know that after almost a year of inactivity, I will be blogging this place up like nobody's business. I have lots to talk about.

However, at the moment, I need to go get my driver's liscence photo taken for my renewal, so I can't talk about these things just yet. I will later. Really. No, I mean it this time.

Upcoming topics to look forward to: Wil Wheaton, driver's liscence photos, and possibly an ongoing story! Ooh, boy!

We'll see how long this newfound bloggy excitement lasts...

The Saga of my Norfolk Pine

Happy Easter, everyone!

Back before Christmas, my sister found a small, potted Norfolk Pine lying on the side of the street. It had been cast out with the rest of someone's garbage. Feeling bad for it, my sister took it with her, gave it to me, and it ended up in my bedroom. I continually watered it, hopeful for its survival because it had not yet turned brown and fallen apart, like so many past Christmas trees.

Nothing happened. It stayed green, but there was no new growth (that I could see) and it was still as brittle as... well, a dried-up Norfolk Pine.

Today I decided to do some emergency plant CPR. I put it into a much larger pot (the roots has gotten bound up in their small space), surrounded it with nice rich potting soil, and pruned off the dead parts. It was at this point that I discovered that some jackass had spray-painted it green, hence the lack of brown I had been watching for. Not good.

What hope am I clinging to, then? Well, some of the branches near the very bottom seemed soft and still pliable. The upper ones literally shattered when I cut them. We'll have to see. I'd really like this cast-aside tree to survive and possibly flourish. Here's hoping for the best.

Anyone got any ideas for a name for my Norfolk Pine? Of course, that would involve someone actually reading my blog (not likely) and then going ahead and replying to this post (less likely). I'll just sit here and pet my pine tree. Actually, that's a bad idea, because it tends to break when you touch it. We're pulling for ya, buddy!

I would post some pictures of him, but I suck at taking digital camera pictures and the ones I took ended up blurry as hell. Screw digital cameras. Give me a nice black-and-white Minolta any day. Cameras are supposed to give a nice, satisfying "cuh-chik!" when you use them, not a "beep." All right, I'm done.

Something that drives me bonkers, Part I

So I'm sitting here at work, eating tuna and Matzoh and wondering what I should post a blog about. My mind went from topic to topic (Lemons vs. Limes*, "Favorite" Movie vs. "Best" Movie**, Beautiful Actresses My Age Who Should and Might Actually Marry Me if They Only Knew I Existed***) when I finally decided to do what I usually do: complain. I'm good at it. Ask me about my Best Buy rant sometime.

But I'm not just going to complain. I'm going to complain with a purpose. I have the utmost hope that people will understand where I am coming from and do their very best to change, not for me, but for the good of the land, to quote Tenacious D.

Today I will complain about the usage of a certain word. Duck and cover; here comes the English graduate in me (hey, he's gotta be used for something).

"Breath" and "Breathe"

This is very simple. "Breath" rhymes with "death" and is a noun. A "breath" is what one takes into their lungs or mumbles under, or maybe offends people with after eating something particularly nasty. "Breathe" rhymes with "seethe" and is a verb. To "breathe" is to inhale and exhale.

You don't know how many times I've read the sentence "I can't breath." Yikes. How do you feel when you read the sentences "I can't coffee", "I can't paperclip", or "I can't Emancipation Proclamation"? You should feel as though your innermost soul has been offended. Mine does. You can't even do stuff like that in creative writing, where grammar rules can be broken with wild abandon. So please, for the sake of my innermost soul and the world itself, use "breath" as a noun and "breathe" as a verb. The "e" on the end changes the vowel sound from a short "eh" to a long "ee".

That's it. I know; not particularly witty, but something I've been meaning to get off my chest. I promise the next entry will be more entertaining.

...this is kind of a lame blog entry, isn't it? Here - for reading all the way to the end, you get to know that 8675309 (as in the song) is a prime number, xenon burns green, if a flatworm is taught to run a maze, ground up, and fed to another flatworm, that flatworm will be able to run the maze on the first try, and "stewardesses" is the longest word you can type with one hand on a normal keyboard.

So it's not a total loss.



* limes
** Run Lola Run & The Shawshank Redemption, respecively
*** Thora Birch

Meaningful Crap?

Some words on the title.

Back in my Freshman year of college, a poetry class had me create a chapbook of poems. I titled it "Meaningful Crap", because anything more witty would have been, well, meaningful crap. I thought it was punchy, humorous, and a fair representation of what lay within.

Last year, I bought a nice harcover notebook to keep every poem and short story and flash fiction I had ever written in (I got halfway through, messed up a page in pen, and kind of gave up - makes me wonder about the longevity of this webpage). It was titled "Meaningful Crap: The Book", because it was a step up from the chapbook before it. Adding a colon and redundant description to any title makes it seem cooler and more important.

Now the blog. This is my first attempt at anything like this, so naturally (after an exhaustive 2 minute attempt to think of something incredibly witty), I continued my tradition of positive self-esteem and titled it as you see above. It implies an evolution of sorts; my writing is changing as I grow older and the presentation is following along with it, but still there is a connection to my past that can never be severed without losing the one thing that makes me who I am.

Or, in other words, meaningful crap.

...I think it's meaningful, anyway. You'll probably think it's crap.

We're both winners! *high fives the montitor*