the english language is retarded

an atheist is a person who rejects theism, this would lead any reasonable person to believe that the prefix a- indicates the opposite of the morpheme to which it is attached

but then bam an exception comes flying out of the proverbial 'left field,' propelled by the unknowable force of linguistics, and smashes the fielder in the head, thus stunning him and knocking him to the ground, if this metaphor is still running i would suppose that this would reflect the linguist being struck on the head by a hefty tome containing the rules and nuances of the english language, falling from the ceiling after being dislodged by miniature tears in the fabric of space time as a consequence of batshit insane philological constructs (the linguist will probably be killed by this impact unfortunately)

the exception i am referring to is of course the word "esthetic" which is a synonym to "aesthetic,"

also "flammable" which is a synonym to "inflammable,"

i wonder if a multidisciplinary linguist-scientist will ever use the convoluted niceties of language to build a time machine or some equivalently physically impossible device

i don't get tablecloths

the idea of them is to 'protect' yr table from spills, stains, damage, etc

but what is the point of doing that if the immaculate aesthetic of the table cannot be appreciated anyways by virtue of the fact that it is being concealed by a tablecloth

and don't say 'the tablecloth has its own aesthetic' no that's bullshit because the tablecloth itself is susceptible to all the things that a tableclothless table is susceptible to so if you are tableclothing the table to protect its aesthetic then you would do the same thing to the tablecloth (with a meta-tablecloth i suppose)

does this make tablecloths ironic? maybe the person who invented the tablecloth is like walking around and observing the massive success of his invention while looking down in disdain and shaking his head at the sorry state to which human society has been brought down by time, stupidity, materialism, capitalism, politics, consumerism, and one more thing shit what is it i can't remember

who knew that tablecloths were a symbol so laden with insight about us and the way we live,

oh yeah the 'thing' i forgot before (that is bringing down human society) is drug use

what i am about to unveil will blow yr mind

ok here we go are you sure that you are ready for this

brace yrself

i'm gonna give you a bit of time (you are going to need it trust me)

are you ready

ok good

let me give you a little bit of time for you to recover from the shock

ok you should be able to pick yr jaw up from off the floor at this point

alright you are doubtlessly still in disbelief so i am just going to straight up confirm what you still probably can't believe you just saw

yes that is an argyle towel

give it a moment to sink in here it is again

yes that is argyle printed on fucking terrycloth

the greatest pattern of all time printed on the greatest material of all time god damn this concept alone probably has the potential to be the subject of a thesis on textiles no scratch that two theses, no actually two theses on awesome

whoever designed this is srsly a genius,

i am going to buy a thousand of these and then take a shower and cocoon myself in them and then fall asleep in my damp cozy shelter of argyle towels and when i awaken i will emerge from my soft envelope of greatness and take a breath of air as my smiling teeth glisten in the sunshine and i will radiate positivity and i will realize how terrific it is to be alive

conversations are war

alright before i direct this post to the subject matter suggested by the name of its title i would like to address a concern that a reader brought up about "chat clients,"

the concern was that i didn't write about pidgin

so here is my answer: i didn't write about pidgin because a pidgin is a bird not a chat client and the post was not about birds, go back to ornithology class you scrub oh and while you're at it why don't you also start paying attention

we now return to yr regularly scheduled programming

a quality film

humans are "social animals" apparently, which means we form relationships networks etc. the way we do this is generally by communicating to each other, nowadays this is achieved by texting/iming/email/whatever and traditionally it has been done by means of smoke signals/carrier pidgins/telegrams

but in my opinion the most glorious form of human communication is the conversation,

think about it, a conversation is like a real time strategy game, you have to keep up the offensive and not run out of topics or embarrass yrself all the while keeping on yr toes thinking of jokes to make to impress yr associates and it really all is quite stressful

but thankfully for yalls i am a "professional conversation warrior" and i am willing to share some of my strategies

you should consider this a huge service and favor because i generally charge thousands of dollars for this information,

battle strategy #1: don't be a loser

ok this probably seems kind of obvious but if you want to have any chance at all of making a name for yrself on the competitive conversationalist circuit then you need to be somewhat interesting to begin with. i mean yeah my nickname on the official forums is "the miracle worker" since i have tutored countless idiots to fame but i need something to work with, some foundation out of which to construct greatness, some mold from which to sculpt the very essence and embodiment of all that is representative of charisma and charm and conversational prowess. so if you are some crazy rpg player whose character level is greater than yr age or if yr greatest accomplishment in life is having devised a method by which to urinate without having to pull down yr pants then i am sorry but close the browser window and go home there is nothing for you here

battle strategy #2: always steer the conversation towards you

if you are talking about oh i don't know unhealthy food then bring up a story about you eating shitty pizza at a local place (you can say this even if it didn't happen btw, this technique will be more closely examined below) and then talk about how you went home and did a bunch of rad stuff that will make the people with whom you are talking look up to you and admire you. another way to pull this off is to subtly but abruptly change the topic, if for instance you are confabulating about the topic of some shit like everyone's favorite colors then what you should do is after someone makes a joke say "ha ha ha oh that reminds me, i bought an obscenely expensive car yesterday" and then talk about the car, probably no one will have a keen enough sense to ask why the joke reminded you of yr anecdote. but you should always have a backup plan in case that happens

battle strategy #3: invent things and hyperbolize

no one cares about how you almost ran over a squirrel on the road, however if you say that there was a pristine deer in the middle of the street, a majestic silhouette crowned by the golden glow of the morning sun, dew glistening on his antlers like crystals dangling from an elaborate chandelier and then you swerved with all yr might to avoid murdering this beautiful creature and thanks to what could only be attributed to divine intervention narrowly avoided crashing into a tree, a great oaken giant, calm, observant, wiser than nature itself then you might cause some people to cry and if there any any girls then they will most likely ask you to hook up with them. oh and if there happens to be a nobel representative hanging around the area eavesdropping on the conversation then he might approach you and grant you the nobel prize for literature on the account that the story you just told was an impeccable allegory of the beauty and delicacy of the balance between nature and man, and the ephemerality thereof. this has happened to me at least two or three times it's pretty sweet

battle strategy #4: plan, organize, develop

although this strategy is three distinct things i am only counting it as 1 strategy because they are pretty similar, ok?

many people think that conversations are very much improvisational performances in that no one ever rolls into a conversation with memorized scripts i mean this is a conversation not a movie after all but those people are wrong, every master conversationalist knows that unless you engage a conversation with prepared defenses then you are dead meat. for instance if i know that my friend david went to a concert recently then i know he is probably going to talk about it. here is where the strategy comes in you have to research everything you can about this concert and the bands that played and have memorized one-ups to every point you think he is going to bring up. seriously just preempt the hell out of everything that way you can't be caught by surprise and as any soldier will tell you the element of surprise is the most powerful element more powerful than hydrogen even (or helium)

but the key is to make all the prepared stuff seem totally natural and normal if you somehow give away that everything is scripted then you are going to lose a massive amount of face because non-conversationalists think that it is strange to be ready

ok hopefully you guys will know how to have better conversations now that i have "enlightened" you feel free to post in the comments about any conversation strategies you would like to add or about conversations you have had recently where you deployed these strategies, etc,

chat clients

ok so today we are going to talk about chat clients,

first of all just so we set everything straight a chat client is a program which enables you to talk to people using a chat protocol, for instance aim is a chat client that allows you to communicate with the oscar protocol

ok now that i have gotten that quick clarification out of the way we may begin

1. aim

aim is dead, if you use it then damn i don't know what to say, go update yr geocities i guess, somehow it has more than 50% marketshare in the united states despite the fact that it's not even shipped as a default program on any operating system. people are dumb i guess at using computers

aim has a dumb blocky interface that really enrages me, and it calls all yr contacts 'buddies' which is ironic because more often than not when a 'buddy' messages me it makes me want to kill the 'buddy' instead of engaging in the type of friendly conversation/banter that would normally be expected of two buddies speaking to each other. perhaps it is my fault and not the fault of the client that my friends are more annoying than i don't know goddamn mosquitos or flies or barely literate teenage girls w/ whiny voices but still i think that having yr contacts labeled buddies is unprofessional and painfully ironic,

oh by the way i know what you're thinking you're thinking "haha since you know so much about aim then you probably use it which invalidates the authenticity of this post because it is berating aim and aim users" but if you are thinking that then you would be wrong because i have never used aim all the information i have on it i have garnered by merely observing other people use it

incidentally the first google result for aim is the america online instant messenger. i would think it would have been something to do with yknow the verb 'to aim' as in 'aim for the stars' etc but evidently corporations are more important than language? i'll leave that to some social philosopher as cud on which to ruminate and thereby create the milk of ideas (and then he can sell the milk at the store and get rich except that never happens with philosophers (or writers in general (probably because this was an ill-considered metaphor to begin with since philosophers are not cows and writing doesn't share many characteristics with milk)))

2. windows live messenger

this client's icon is a picture of two people made of some sort of bubbly, gelatinous material, one is blue, and the other is green, perhaps this is representative of the demographic that regularly utilizes this chat client

if you are an msn user then i am going to preemptively apologize in case you thought that was offensive,

ok not that many people use this client, if you use it then you are probably from canada or europe since people from those areas tend to be more economically and socially developed in terms of the fact that they are more likely to not still be dicking around in the dark ages ie have realized that aim is not the goddamned bee's knees. i'm cool with that i used to use msn myself actually. also msn has the coolest emoticons in my opinion they look realistic (relative to an emoticon which is not saying much but still)

3. meebo

haha meebo is one of these newfangled web app things, like the things google is trying to take over the world with, yknow have all yr shit on the internet instead of on yr hard drive. generally i think this is pretty retarded you know i mean how am i supposed to straight jam to my phat tunes if i don't happen to have an internet connection or are you really going to make me wait like a fucking eternity for all my shit to be pulled down from the internet before i can start operating my computer honestly i think i would prefer to wait for the operating system to boot and have all my files locally

but i think in the case of chat clients then meebo is the exception to the rule that 'web apps are retarded' (which would prove the rule true as any fallacy-prone freshman logic student would tell you) because a chat client is useless if you don't have an internet connection. plus if you use meebo then when you are showing yr computer to a new friend and they notice the conspicuous absence of a natively installed chat program they will ask "where is yr chat program dude" and you can pretend not to have one and be like "man i don't do that shit i am just not digging the instant messaging kool aid know what i mean" and they will want to agree with you and then think that you are the coolest and most hip person ever while you savor their ignorance heh (and later you can make them do favors for you like give you money, help you pick up girls/guys, make you drinks, etc since they will be compelled by yr awesomeness to do whatever they want you to do)

perhaps that is a far fetched scenario but it's worth a try

4. skype

three words for you: get a cell phone

5. ichat

ichat is the default client on osx, which means that if you use it then you are a priori a tool since you use osx. ichat has a really bland and shittastic interface which is really a shame because it has a ton of functionality that other programs don't have (ie screen sharing video chat etc.) i guess it is the opposite of most apple stuff in that regard (high functionality, low aesthetic.) if you are using ichat then i wager you are also using safari instead of chrome/firefox and quicktime instead of vlc

6. trillian

the only thing i know about trillian is that it converts 'LOL' into an emoticon that makes a sound. this can either be hilariously awesome or pretty useless based on yr preferences and the type of people you chat with

and last but certainly not least

7. adium

that duck is so rad, also i think the name is very badass

ok imagine a high school reunion for a high school class that was composed of like every periodic element, i can imagine you know gold (au) just walking around and spitting game at hot bitches like niobium (nb) and neodymium (nd) while the noble gases (he, ne, ar, kr, xe, rn, uuo) are sitting around at a table talking about the latest fuckin fashion trends or best new music or some hipster shit that no one cares about

then radium (ra) walks in and is like "yo what's up dudes i am the most cool and badass element since i'm radioactive"

and adium is like "nah man yr shit is weak radium i'm adium nice to meet yall" and he steals the party

that is all about chat clients

this is going to be the greatest blog of all time

and you heard it here first

i read somewhere that thanks to the digital age it is impossible in a lifetime to read all the material that is published in only one day

with this in mind when you realize that everything you read is an opportunity cost to reading something better things can get pretty depressing

because there is so much atrocious lit out there and so little gold

and there isn't some index that tells you what to read and in what order to optimize your gains

but if there were one then this website would mo defs be on that index