i feel sorry for all the folks who labor, who look upon this weekend as a chance to escape with the nationally recognized holiday known as labor day. i also envy the fact that this upcoming day of no labor can mean so much to people. because the term "three day weekend" is so foreign to me right now.



many people are here this weekend on their extended weekend. we are doing lots of nothing. we are showing the working folk what they miss about labor-less life. we are doing a good job of showing them too, because we are much practiced in the art of unemployment. do you feel sorry for me or jealous? bit of both i'd assume.



"everyone says, 'you don't do the show anymore, what do you do?' i'll tell you what i do."

"nothing."

"doing nothing, however, is not as easy as it looks, you have to be careful. the idea of doing anything can easily lead to something that would stop me from doing nothing, and that would force me to drop everything."

-jerry seinfeld, comedian-

"a big basis of friendship is commonality and today the different sexes have more in common as they go through the life cycle, which becomes a catalyst and incentive to cross-sex friendships."



"the benefits of platonic friendship are multifold, if a bit different for each sex. male friendships tend to be founded on companionship; men typically define their best friend as someone with whom they can do things. women usually count a close friend as someone with whom they can talk and share feelings."



i do this for my culture. hey look, time magazine says it's okay to have platonic friends. they have solved the ever twisted riddle of "can guys and girls be friends?" they've done it by bringing us examples of some guy/girl friendships that have lasted the test of time and have stayed platonic. whew. what a sense of relief. now i can be at peace with my inner motivations and shady ass self. we need to make an updated harry met sally by the way. i don't even have a catchy title in mind but the movie needs to be updated for the times, you know?



so time says that one out of ten people aged twenty five to thirty four have an opposite sex best friend. wow. only one out of ten? i thought that the figure would be much higher. what does this say about our society? what does this say about me? the soon to be twenty five year old? am i only one of ten? are my peers part of that one in ten or are they a part of that nine? i need to know these things. i will be conducting a totally informal, yet essential, survey in order to find the answers to these questions my damn self. using the scientific method, i will begin with a hypothesis: "my friends are above the national average for opposite sex best friends." some people are saving the world, curing aids, curing cancer, feeding folk, i'm gonna poll my friends. even napolean and einstein started small.



this platonic friends thing touches into an area that is of great concern with me. what happens to your opposite sex friends when they get married? do things have to change? can things remain the same? so far all indications have led me to believe that yes, opposite sex friends change after they get married. not alot maybe, but there is change. i'm against this of course but since i'm not married i can't put my theories into practice. and if i put my theories into practice i might not stay married for too long. catch twenty two. stay true to yourself and kick your own ass. but apparently these time researchers have proven me wrong. thank goodness. i was waiting for a national publication to explore this issue and finally shed some light on the issue.



and now that i am armed with statistics and an article i can carry on my torch and continue to scream to the world: "girls and guys can be friends! platonomy rocks!" hum, potentially a t-shirt idea in there somewhere.



here's something else of interest. "if a friendship is going to become romantic, studies show it usually does so in the beginning, the longer the friendship lasts, the more likely each person is to see the other as a friend." (one study, however, suggests that at around the two-year mark, platonic friends often reconsider their romantic options.) friends reconsider their romantic interest in friends at the two year mark? wow. what does that mean? how did they figure out the two year number? it reminds me of a friend from college who declared that two years of no sex makes you a born again virgin. how he came to two years as his number i have no idea. but i believe him, don't you?

could it be? friends this ugly? original here.



a friend drawing an analogy between complaining and baking a souffle: sometimes, in the making/baking, it falls flat so craftmanship is key. not too much whining, not too much indifference....just a dash of pathos, and of course, the timings gotta be perfect.



paraphrased advice from gaga: you should never talk shit about somebody's ex because if they get back together again, you're screwed.

here's looking at you kid. when you meet people, you're always consciously or unconsciously trying to impart a vibe. some people are better at it than others, some people are easy to read and to figure out. some people bring it much more subtley. but it's a game we all play. with first impressions. trying to present ourselves as professional, nice, welcoming, bitchy, whatever, in different situations. i feel like it's a very conscious thing. or at least, after you've had some social experiences under your belt, it can be "figured out" and recognized. for some people it's about presenting themselves in the best manner possible. glorifying the positive, hiding the negative. or maybe it's not that deep, because it's only a first impression after all.



i see people wanting to come off as cool, accomplished, insightful, wise, smarmy, smart, funny, clowny, drunkard, partier, deep, crazy, shocking or any number of things. some people want to come off as reserved whereas some people want to show how open they are and how comfortable they are with themselves. it's also interesting to note what certain people try to vibe out. especially with friends that you already know. to study them in interactions with strangers or friends, to see how they present themselves. how open or closed they are, the tone of voice they use, the body language.



i've decided, after some thought and deliberation (not much as usual), that the impression i try to give off is that i'm open to anything someone might say to me. that i won't judge them or be taken aback by anything that comes out of their mouth. if they say something, i want them to be comfortable continuing their thought or their story without feeling like i'm evaluating them right then and there. i try to save the evaluations for later and for behind the back gossipy shit. no i'm lying. well no, actually i'm not. but hey. honesty right?



this can at times lead to being too agree-able. i had someone ask me recently if i "pull my punches" and say what people want to hear. if i withhold the negative and present the positive, the affirmative head nod or the verbal "i feel you, uh hum uh hum." i of course didn't think so. but i can see how it might come off that way. i can even see some truth in her observation. would that make me a suck up? god forbid. but no, i am not a suck up. i think as the innately nice guy that i am (save the laughter for the stand up routine people) i couch some of my negative comments in positive and supportive language. and i feel like i'm being positive because i actually am positive with what i say, but what if i'm just witholding the real negative things back? some people say what they want to say, what they have to say, right at the moment. i know i'm not like that. but i would like to believe that i'm not withholding anything either. if asked i attempt to reply honestly. never in a mean or menacing way, but if it's negative, so be it. i also measure the impact of my words, and try to gauge whether or not i can be more directly negative or positive, depending on how well i know a person, or how close i might be to them. and more importantly, gauging how they might react and how to best approach something that may come across as negative.



everyone puts on a show, it's a matter of how grand of a scale that show is produced on. many times the show is subconscious and unconscious but i believe that as we grow into ourselves, our motivations, our interactions, our goals in these interactions, become more straight forwardly clear. and it's interesting, amusing even, to think about that and to observe how people try to come off, and then to compare that to what they think they're giving vibing off.

speak of talking. you talk when you cease to be at peace with your thoughts; and when you can no longer dwell in the solitude of your heart you live in your lips, and sound is a diversion and a pastime. and in much of your talking, thinking is half murdered. for thought is a bird of space, that in a cage of words may indeed unfold its wings but cannot fly.



there are those among you who seek the talkative through fear of being alone. the silence of aloneness reveals to their eyes their naked selves and they would escape. and there are those who talk, and without knowledge or forethought reveal a truth which they themselves do not understand. and there are those who have the truth within them, but they tell it not in words. in the bosom of such as these the spirit dwells in rhythmic silence.



when you meet your friend on the roadside or in the market place, let the sprit in you move your lips and direct your tongue. let the voice within your voice speak to the ear of his ear; for his soul will keep the truth of our heart as the taste of the wine is remember, when the colour is forgotten and the vessel is no more.

-kahlil gibran, the prophet-

i like you as a friend aka kill me now please. there's a difference, between a friendship started from "liking" versus one started from "just friends." a friendship started from liking is one in which one party or the other likes the other one. hopefully for the sake of emotional happiness and joy to the world, it's both people liking each other. but as savvy cynical people rooted firmly in reality, we know that's not often the case. a friendship starting from "just friends" is pretty much everything else. the differences can be subtle and there can often be many gray areas but i think for most guy/girl friendships there can be a classification into either of these two categories. an example of a just friend friendship might be a friendship struck up while in the midst of a common activitiy, such as studying, working, playing etc.



but a friendship started from liking has an ulterior motive. a like friendship is fundamentally based on one person trying to get to know the other while wanting to get with them. be it relationship or otherwise. i don't think i need to define "get." now, this kind of friendship can be somewhat less "pure." i put pure in quotes because i don't want it to seem like a bad thing that friendships aren't pure. friendships start for millions of reasons, i'm just highlighting two general ones that i see. a like friendship is fueled by the innate desire to get to know someone to date them. this can lead to all sorts of situations and levels of depth and whatever. but we'll avoid that.



the main question here is, which one is more real as a friendship? actually you can't really answer that because a real friendship is a real friendship regardless of the motivation behind it. or is it? if a friendship starts because one person wants something from the other, is it a truly pure friendship? if i were to be only friends with you to get at your nice car and to get rides from you, is that a pure friendship? a friendship can start because we started sharing car rides but if it's based upon one person getting car rides then i might suspect an unpure friendship. so in this manner, is a "like friendship" a real friendship?



i realize of course that like friendships can transition into real friendships and that often happens, but is it somehow tainted if the like never goes away? then what you're dealing with is not a friend but someone who is always trying to get with you. there can be friends that you're attracted to and might possibly pursue under the right conditions, but to have an active liking, does that interfere with the creation of a real friendship?

it's like a friendship and a business partnership

and we have to always be conscious of the difference

between'em; because y'know some things can happen

that'll ruin one or the other so

we always we always stay conscious of those things

those obstacles that can y'know, trip us up

because we ain't trying to go out like that

-gangstarr, bi vs friendship-