In the world of text messaging, emailing, instant messaging, blogging, journals, and all the other forms of e-communication, the smiley is a common form of expression. Behind a keyboard, emotional exchange loses its value almost entirely, so there needed to be some way to exchange reactions and emotions via an emotionless form of communication. The smiley came to be the answer.

Of all the variations of smileys out there, one can truly be considered the “all-purpose” smiley: the tongue face ( =P ). It can come off as happy, jokingly, disturbed, etc. This smiley can also let you get away with saying just about anything you want.

With the tongue face, you can really say just about anything you want and get away with it. It creates an air of uncertainty in the mind of the reader about if you were serious or not, and they will default to thinking you were just kidding. Next time you are chatting with someone, say something midly hurtful and bust out a tongue face. I will bet a small portion of my salary that the response is in the realm of “lol” or “haha” or some such equally neutral response.

Psychologically speaking, people want to believe that others are inheritly good-natured… especially those we are familiar enough with converse with and joke with. Thus, when someone says something that is hurtful but throws down a tongue face, we don’t know what to make of it. “Maybe they were just kidding… yea… thats it.” However, this can only go so far. If you say something overtly invasive and it cuts deep, the tongue face will NOT get you out of it. For instance, calling a girl fat or ugly is not likely to be reprieved with a tongue face.. prepare for a fight.

Over the past few years, I have noticed a growing phenomena that is unique to the cellphone age, wherein everyone has a cellphone that they carry with them at all times. You could not have witnessed the phenomena I am about to describe 10-20 years ago because cellphones simply were not mainstream enough nor cheap enough nor compact enough.

What I am about to describe is something I am dubbing “The Cellphone Ignore”. It has its roots in social psychology, but is a relatively new outbreak that effects people young and old.

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Today, the stock market slid 778 points; the single greatest drop in the market ever, points-wise. In all, its a 7% drop in the market (Black Monday tallied at 22% drop in the market, the day WWI broke out tallied just short of 25%).

Just felt like I needed to record that in my blog. I leave you with a quote by G.W.:

This economy of ours is on a solid foundation, but we can’t take economic growth for granted.

So today is my last day at Carestream Health. I have been working there for a little over a year, on a co-op as part of the graduation requirements for RIT. Overall it was a good experience. They were very flexible and nearly everyone was quite friendly. Aside from fulfilling my graduation requirements and getting some work experience to pad my resume, I should be set on money until I graduate in February. Class starts again on Monday. I’m somewhat looking forward to returning to school but I’m sure that will fade quickly once I’m actually there.

Did you know that there are not one, but TWO spacecrafts that are nearly outside of our solar system? Am I the only one that thinks that’s fucking crazy? Two thousand years ago we were making stone castles… now we have small boxes that are about to go whizzing into open space to whatever their fate may be.

It’s amazing the things that we have done in terms of space travel. Not only do we have countless satellites orbiting our planet which we rely on daily, but we sent men and probes to the Moon, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune, Pluto, and beyond. Currently, Voyager 1 is not only the furthest man-made object from the Sun, it is the furthest natural-made object not including comets that are on long paths.

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Did you know that any time your alarm does not go off, causing you to be inevitably late to whereever you plan on going, this can be chalked up to sabotage?

Think about it next time: you are sleeping and enjoying a nice dream, the birds are chirping, the sun is peeking through the windows. Then, you suddenly realize that for the past three business years you have been getting up and showering in the dark…. SABOTAGE!

Someone has invaded your home, snuck into your room, turned off your alarm, and left you to suffer the consequences. You would never do such a thing to yourself, thus this must be the only logical conclusion.

This happened to me today, and I was pissed.