Boom!

Happy 4th of July! Today I celebrated various holidays, including, but not limited to, the following: my birthday, Father's Day, my Grandmother's birthday, my Grandfather's birthday, my parents' anniversary, and Independence Day. I also saw Chuck and Kelsey as well, we went to see fireworks:


It's been nice to be home, however, it doesn't provide a large amount of blogging material (alas, I don't find myself falling into situations quite like Eric has been). To correct this issue, as always, I've found something else to rant on for a short bit: Facebook and Peer Pressure.

Since I expect our average readership is fairly (if not inescapably) addicted to Facebook, you're probably familiar with the "suggestions" that are made on the upper right-hand corner of your homepage. Now if you're like me, you probably spend enough time on Facebook to notice what Zuckerberg & Pals think you might be interested in. The thing is, do you notice how it's presented? For an example, let's use "rampant sex" as an example (yes, I'm aware of what type of ads this may create for us; we never claimed to be family-friendly).

You log in, creep the cute girl/guy you're interested in at the time, write something on someone's wall, probably add a few extra consonantss to makkke your poinnnt...and then you go back to the homepage to see what's up with everyone else in the world. And you see some suggestions. "Hugs," no thanks, you click the "x." Another one pops up in a smooth graphical substitution, "bonfires," nah, you haven't had a bonfire in a while, pass. The next one: "Rampant Sex, John Smith, Alice Jones, and 20 other friends have become fans."

Damn! Well, if that many people are fans, hell, I guess I'm a fan too! Do you see what's wrong here?? While there are undoubtedly some out there who are like "what's this guy doing bashing rampant sex?!" I remind you that Fiji isn't back on campus quite yet. Now, continuing with my example, Facebook packages every suggestion with the names and number of friends who are also fans. What's next? "Drugs, everyone but you has become a fan." "Prostitution, everyone but you and the clergy have become fans." I think I've made my point. Chew on that for a while.

On a lighter note, my sister gave me a couple birthday gifts from her recent galavanting across Europe, and although the Swiss Army t-shirt is pretty cool, she earned major "classy sister" points by purchasing what I now refer to as the "Holy Roman Bottle-Opener," a bottle-opener, the handle of which is inset with the likenesses of Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI. I imagine it will remind me that when cracking open a cold one, God's on my side.