Text Message Sent to Friend: Wanna get together later and finish up?
Response: There was a time when I would have said yes. No. Have a nice life.
I called the person who was supposed to come over and help me finish sorting some Magic Cards and found out that he’d replaced his ex-girlfriend’s number in his phone’s favorites list with mine. Apparently, the name didn’t change.
I enjoy the onslaught of emails, calls and Facebook messages I receive around the holidays from former high school associates. Their saccharine sentiment that makes them feel like they’re doing missionary work from the Church of Cool that usually goes something like “hey gang!  It’s your arrogant friend who left for the big city.  I’m going to be inyour backwater hovel for a week and want to give you the honor of hearing me wax idiotic about how worldly I am now.”
Normally my response ranges from silence to “I hope you die of amoebic dysentery in a ditch” but Joe Naylor has provided another option: “Isn’t my face red. I’ve been so busy being useful to society and accomplishing things like not being a douch that I forgot you existed.” I think I may try this take as a New Year’s resolution. What tactics do you use?
For years I’ve kept a list of books I’ve read largely for bibliographic purposes. That way if I ever needed to cite something I could pull out the list, invent a page number, invent a statistic and accurately attribute it to the author complete with print locations. Goodreads.com is a “reading social network” but more importantly the site keeps this information so I can pitch updating the spreadsheet. After I updated it with what I’m reading, it searched for other users through my gmail contacts and presented a list that I’m hesitant to friend: they’re all churchy. All of them. Every stinking one. The page displays your most recent read book and I’ve recently gone on a bidge of skeptical reading ranging from The Faith Healers by James Randi to Irreligion by John Allen Paulos (Temple prof, go Owls!). For fear of their divine wrath I have to space my updates in pairs so The Secret Origins of the Bible will be quickly followed by The Big Book of Adorable Puppies or something equally buccolic to both act as protection from the superficial glance and as counterweight when St. Peter reviews it.