Walks and Strangers

You have just gone for a walk. 

Perhaps it’s a walk to the local park, to the shops, to visit your friends, or to stalk your ex. It’s long and tedious and you’re probably doing something illegal. You’ve been cruising along solo for about a good five minutes when – suddenly – you see a stranger making their way towards you.

  

And then you start to sort of freak out.

ohgodohmanohgodohmanohgodohmanohgod

You approach the stranger in what seems like slow motion. You feel every breath, every heart beat. Irrational thoughts skip across the waves of anxiety like smooth pebbles over the ocean of emotion. Your brain is drowning in the possibilities and you are wet with sweat and urine.

I call this the One Stranger Experience. Go for a walk through a crowded place and things are fine. Everyone is occupied, in a hurry and on their merry way. Even to other people you are just one of many in a crowd. But once you go for that walk where you end up encountering a single person on an otherwise deserted street it changes everything. It makes things personal. You’d just want the experience to be goddamn over once it starts. What are we meant to do in those situations? I remember absolutely nothing teaching us in school or at home about the proper conduct of on-street communications.

After conducting the test, Mr Jelowless learned exactly why his classroom smelt like piss all the time.

Well, that’s what this blog post is here for. What do you do?

1.        

      1. Walk straight on ahead – look forward

This is probably one of the most effective methods in dealing with street strangers. You look determined, stalwart and on the move. You have the look that simply says ‘I do not have any time for your bullshit’. It can be a hard method for some to manage because of its impersonal stance and unfriendly approach.

Pull this face. Nobody will fuck with you.

2. Walk straight on ahead – gaze at nearby landmarks

If you find yourself in an area where you can marvel the lush flora or any spectacle at all you will avoid the dreaded eye contact. This could backfire if you happen to look at somebody's home and they happen to be looking at you. Then you get into a Stare Standoff which is another social element I’ll explain in a later post.

Uh.

3.      3. Walk straight on ahead – fiddle with mobile

By taking out your mobile and pretending to be popular you can effectively avoid the anxiety of this encounter. You’re occupied with your mobile, see? Checking the time, texting friends, calling your dealer. The possibilities leave you scot-free!

It's better than that piddle app.

4.      4. Stop existing

This is a really hard technique to pull off. It is not certain if anyone has pulled this technique off as their existence is wiped from history from doing such an act.

5.      5. Cross the street 

This is a very risky move. Depending on the race of you and the stranger this act can be interpreted as terribly racist and you might get filmed on A Current Affair wherein your reputation will be ravaged. Unless you are a racist or actually do need to cross the street, avoid this technique.

From when walking across the street becomes running across the street.

  

6.      6. Greet stranger as you pass

This is a technique that is very iffy and requires a lot of attention. The other methods of avoiding the stranger require you to not make any social contact at all. This method is usually a desired choice for those who dislike the approach of .1, as this can satisfy those friendly urges. However, keep in mind the cost of your actions. Saying hello puts out an invitation to start a connection. If the stranger is talkative, easily distracted, sexually attracted to your hair or bored they might join you on your walk. This is a constant fear and if the situation ever arises, gods help you and so much for that ‘solitary’ walk.

There are instances where this option is unavoidable as the stranger says hello first. The most oft and effective method for when the stranger says hello is to grunt in acknowledgement but with the tone of a greeting. For example:

"G'day"

"WRghanHAh"

The key here is to be quick and to make sure you don’t say good morning or afternoon; the grunt will just be passed off as the intended greeting if you are up to speed. If you botch the greeting and say ‘good morning’ when it is actually in the afternoon - then congratulations. You just made yourself look like an idiot in front of a complete stranger and you’ll carry this failure with you for the entirety of your existence.

You just had to throw your whole goddamn life away.

The speed to which you walk is the key to a successful grunt. It is an almost essential technique that must be utilized and especially in Australian society where ‘How’re ya going?’ is a formal greeting. Honestly, what are you meant to say to a passing stranger who says that? By the time you hear the words leaving their moist supple lips you are poised with a question.

How are you actually going? 

By the time you think of a reply and try to utter your carefully constructed words, the stranger has sped past you. You talk to the air as the stranger disappears leaving you with an empty feeling. You didn’t answer their question. 

What kind of horrible person are you? You fucking sicken me. 

Hence, the grunt is a popular option and with a speedy delivery your encounter should go like clockwork. Even if the stranger realises you grunted at them in a merry tone you’ll be too far off to be called a caveman.

That’s all for my small expository on the One Stranger Experience during this instance in our social lives. I hope you enjoyed the pictures I drew in MS Paint. Yeah, I drew all of those. Feel free to use them for whatever purpose. The cramping in my hand is a reward in itself and I think I should try to bed it early tonight. Goodluck to me.

Anyways, peace out.

Junk Mail

I can’t sleep again. And you know what that means? I'll actually type out an article!

Yay!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Actually, I have some half-written articles in the works. It’s just I need some driving force to make me do work. Such as sleep deprivation and it’s delusions making me type this.

So here's a collection of funny things I have found in my junk mail accompanied with my own comments.

Well, I found it funny. Mostly because of spelling errors and no sense makey.

~

From:  מיטל מיטל

hello friend and talk to me on msnessengar madison20sweet@hotmail.com im on all night ive seen your picatures posted up totally want to get to know you more

The information transmitted in this e-mail, including attachments, contains confidential information belonging to the sender and is legally privileged. This information is intended only for the use of the individual or entity named above. All persons are advised that they may face penalties under state and federal law for sharing this information with unauthorized individuals. If you have received this transmission by mistake, you are hereby notified that any disclosure, copying, distribution, or action taken in reliance on the contents of these documents is strictly prohibited. If you have received this transmission in error, please reply to the sender to arrange for remedy of this situation and then immediately delete the entire message including any attachments.

You will tell him, because I would, if I were in your place,
and had to call two or three times before she awoke.

Comments:

So starting at the name it’s easy to tell this ain't normal at all. Maybe if the person sent the email using an English name I might not regard it as spam the moment my eyes glazed over the goddamn sender. What language do those characters even freaking belong to?

The lack of punctuation and poor English turns me off instantly. 'msnessenger'? The goddamn word 'Messenger' is right next to the goddamn 'Hotmail' button at the top of the page. And yes I checked, their account uses hotmail. I am also scared by the prospect of this person looking at my 'picatures' and then suddenly taking an interest in me. If this was a real scenario and this person based people on looks, I’d really rather not want to meet them. 

This big legal disclaimer in the middle obviously is made to scare me into replying so I don't feel like an accessory to some shitty faux-law smack dab in the middle of this poorly composed email. I take it that this has been copied and pasted from one of 7U7u77U'N's friends who gave a fuck during their English lessons in high school. The next paragraph looks CTRL+V’d as well.

This third paragraph is the kicker. It has absolutely no bearing on the email whatsoever and I think it's a ploy that's meant to confuse the hell out of whoever reads it, just to elicit a '....what?' response. 'And had to call two or three times before she awoke.'? What am I even meant to think?

"SO YOU AWAKE HOW ABOUT DEM PICATURES?"

  

From: johnfrank mower

Dear Sir or Madam:

    Please forgive us to disturb your precious time !

Welcome to visit our *HOME-PAGE* : http:/www.easy-ship.org 

brand shoes,bags and clothes.more autumn clothes waiting for you.

◆The best service   ◆Quick delivery

◆Competitive price  ◆A large selection of merchandise

More information,please visit my online shipping store.

Best wishes! :⊙

Comments:

It is in this email I feel a smidgen of sympathy for this person, even if they are trying to confirm my email for their spamming database and phish for all my money. Here you can plainly see an attempt to be somewhat coherent and friendly. See, they apologised for the email, as if it was a telephone call interrupting me during my kegal exercises, or during a particularly tense Mexican stand-off or while being generally unproductive. See how personal this is? They try really hard. They even called me 'Sir or Madam', as if to say they are here to serve me.  Thankyou Mr Johnfrank Mower.

However, I cannot ignore shit when I smell it.

Comic Sans as the font. Comic Fucking Sans. If I were to write a resume, or major essay, a novel or even a goddamn pamphlet in Comic Sans I’d be exiled from society for my pompous douchebaggery. It is the ultimate faux pas in the textual world. I had a time in my younger days when I was all pro Comic  Sans. I was naive and it was like comic book text but better. It wasn’t. The intoxicatingly atrocious stains that are used to suck me into their ‘Easy-Ship’, which could be a whore-cruise if I stopped reading there, stand out as the flaky zombie skin of the body of this email.

Did someone say whore?

I’ll finish here on the symbols. The diamonds I can compliment them on. But what in God’s name is at the end of this email? Is that meant to be a smiley? That deformed mouth with an eyeball lurking in it? I don’t know what to think anymore.

From: Myriam Col

hi there i was looking around people
in my area and came across your pics
youre super cute how about going on messenger
and adding my name on there its madison23adams@hotmail.com
im online right now so lets talk and exchange more pics
happy thanksgiving tomorrow be safe and good

---------- Forwarded message ----------

From: Madison
Date: Tue, Nov 22, 2010 at 9:55 PM
Subject:FW: This will give you chills, I scored 100
Fw: This will give you chills, I scored 100

 This will give you the chills.......

GOOD chills.

 A young man had been to Wednesday Night Bible

Study.

 

T he Pastor had shared about listening to God and obeying the Lord's voice

The young man couldn't help but wonder, 'Does God still speak to people?'

After service, he went out with some friends for coffee and pie and they discussed the message.

Several different ones talked about how God had led them in different ways.

It was about ten o'clock when the young man started driving home.

Sitting in his car, he just began to pray, 'God...If you still speak t o people, speak to me. I will listen. I will do my best to obey.'

As he drove down the main street of his town, he had the strangest thought to stop and buy a gallon of milk.

He shook his head and said out loud, 'God is that you?' He didn't get a reply and started on toward home.

But again, the thought, buy a gallon of milk.

The young man thought about Samuel and how he didn't recognize the voice of God, and how little Samuel ran to Eli.

'Okay, God, in case that is you, I will buy the milk.' It didn't seem like too hard a test of obedience. He could always use the milk. 

He stopped and purchased the gallon of milk and started off toward home.

   

As he passed Seventh Street, he again felt the urge, 'Turn Down that street.'

  

This is crazy he thought, and drove on past the intersection.

Again, he felt that he should turn down Seventh Street .

At the next intersection, he turned back and headed down Seventh.

Half jokingly, he said out loud,

'Okay, God, I will.'

Comme- WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS SHIT.

What is even up with this baffling piece of douche-canoe.

Okay so Myriam tells me I’m cute. Big deal.

She uses improper grammar, poor spelling. 

Grade: D-

Okay yeah, wishes me thanks giving. So far Myriam is generic. 

But, what the fuck is that? 

That thing , you know, that horrible mess hanging at the bottom?

Oh wait, I’m meant to answer that.

I think it’s meant to be disguised as a forwarded email which is what my now fogged brain is trying to reason.

But reading the actual content left me half empty. Is that the punchline? Is that what is meant to give me chills.....?

GOOD chills?

Actually it's only half of a Christian story.

http://www.gospelweb.net/Illustrations/BuyTheMilk.htm

I was absolutely gob-smacked at the work of this ‘Myriam’. They send an email, and copy + paste half a Christian  fictional short story that’s meant to give me chills and-

How the fuck is this meant to give me chills?

This is inane. I can’t contain my infuriation.

lakjdhfjskalksjdhfjdks

Asdfghjklalksjkasjhdkadhfdjskdfhdj

Body Odour

Introduction:

Body Odour is the scourge of the social world. Even though it can be easily managed sometimes it has this habit of creeping up when we least expect it like Bobo, the clown doll you thought you locked in the attic. People working out in gyms learn very quickly that unless they start spraying on the good-smell they'll be fresh out of friends with the better smelling armpits. According to Wikipedia:

“Body odor or body odour, sometimes colloquially abbreviated as B.O., is the smell of bacteria growing on the body. The bacteria multiply rapidly in the presence of sweat, but sweat itself is almost completely odorless to humans.”

Keep it in mind that sweat itself doesn't make the smell, rather, the bacterium that happens to thrive in the excrement that was forced through your skin to stop you from overheating and dying. I’ll probably cover sweat in another post about how disgusting and awesome it is.

We've all been there.

Social ramifications of Body Odour:

B.O. can be the worst thing that can happen to you in a social scene. It has the power to automatically turn off every person in your proximity. I’ve had the experience of being turned off by a lady's pungent scent and ever since I’ve put on enough body deodorant in my armpits to act as an extra layer of skin.

What everyone should do before they hit on somebody.

Having B.O. can kill your social life if it becomes way too prevalent. Remember that smelly kid back in school or high school? How did their social life go? It went to shit. Much like how they smelt. They probably had that one friend who happened to either be the poor sod that was stuck with the mighty smelly one, smelt terrible themselves, or lost all sense of smell by being conceived, birthed and raised in a fertilizer plant. Body Odour occurs mostly in people who exercise a lot, people who have a lot of sex, people who do a lot of masturbating and people who happen to be in hot weather. However, depending on the severity of B.O., the sex might stop. But the masturbation can go on for eons.

Someone has been busy.

Remedies to Body Odour: 

The most oft used approach to avoiding the smelly side of sweating is by using deodorant which is something anyone with the most basic of hygiene sense should understand. There are instances however where deodorant is unavailable.

Proper deodorizing technique.

This is okay if you are spending the day at home but any venture into public is an anxiety-ridden trip into the social realm. Being the dealer of body odour is very difficult to cover up without the proper tools for the job. Body sprays, although they don’t work as a deodorant, can cover up the smell but this is just taking care of the symptoms. If you are unable to find any form of cover-up scents then I suggest you use the stealth strategies:

1: Keep your goddamn arms down. You’ll look like a robot, but this method should cover up your armpits and reduce your body odour by 20-40%.

2: Always be on the move. If in the supermarket, dart between aisles and make sure that you snatch up items quickly. That way you should avoid sticking in one place at once and letting the odour build up intensely in one spot. Also, don’t forget to pick up the goddamn deodorant.

3: Use your friends. This can range from many forms. If you have a friend with a swimming pool, spend a lot of your time in there to cover up your pits – or alternatively go to the beach. If you’re out with friends, admit that you ran out of body odour and see if any has some spray for you. If that fails, hide close to them until they give up tolerating your hell-odour and buy some for you, or if not, use them as a scapegoat for strangers. That way, personal embarrassment can be avoided as long as nobody is inquiring as to which out of your friends is the smelly one.

4: Use other smells to smother yours. Covering yourself up with another smell might work but it’s up to you to assess it. If you are moving around too much while already under the B.O. affliction it can make you smell worse than a legion of feral pigs running on treadmills in a gym without proper ventilation. Using sprays from bathrooms/toilets can be used as a last resort. You might smell like the bathroom/toilet, but by hell you won’t smell like Mike Tyson fighting his night terrors in his sleep all night.

Putting up with someone’s smell is a psychological battle within itself. I try to be polite and ignore or don’t draw any attention to the outstretched hand of smell-smog slapping me in the face loony tunes style. But that isn’t helping that person’s case at all. You got to bite the bullet and tell them that they smell – something I never did. To not do that will keep the person under the illusion that they smell beautiful and that they could lift their armpits all they want which is exactly opposite to what you want. I wouldn’t be surprised if B.O. was the sole reason for a breakdown in a friendship. And I am not surprised if it is some kind of horrendous fetish. Wait, why am I saying ‘if’?

Before, people licked smelly, slimy coarse lumps of amphibian skin - now we lick toads

Closing comments:

Body odour is one of the many pitfalls of surviving socially. To get it is to be cursed. Thankfully with new advances in technology curses only fall on the ignorant and the poor. This has been my first official post and it was pretty fun typing up. I promise I’ll deliver better stuff later.

Here’s to a fun indefinite future ahead! Thanks for reading!

Ha-ha! Celebrations!

Let's get this thing started

Hey, sup.

Welcome to this little corner of the internet. If you've read the title then I guess this introduction will be a tad redundant but I'll get on with it anyway.

This blog will probably cover various topics about my experiences, observations and tips with coping in the social environment we humans happen to exist in. My experiences with high school psychology and my first year of sociology at university are what mainly got my brain sparks flying and thinking about how crazy the social world is and how it is much like some kind of proving ground for survival.

I am also using this blog as a way to improve my writing skills. I have been a Mad reader for many years, stopping for a bit and picking up reading the magazines again. I really enjoyed the social commentary which opened up my mind to the misconceptions and reality of things and it's method of satirizing pretty much everything. I now read Cracked.com and I am really pumped at making some satire-based articles. But well, I gotta practice in this blog first.

Since I began university I've been making many more public encounters and my social experiences have increased substantially. If life were an aquatics centre, I just dived into the adult swimming pool, leaving the warm piss-filled kiddie trough behind. Looking back, I think kiddie pools were warm because of all the pee.


SOCIAL SURVIVAL TIP: Avoid pools frequented by children. 
You won't freak out later when you realize, when typing your first blog post, that you've bathed in pee.


I'll probably also post  my own musings, general thoughts and maybe some pictures or comics. Who knows?

Anyways, let's hope that I bother to do more posts and get into the habit.

This'll be fun.